


when the witch returns (no judge will be spared)

by jayjaybird



Series: No Rest For The Wicked [2]
Category: Descendants (2015), Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Asexuality, Disordered Eating, F/M, Historical Auradon, I reject your canon and substitute my own, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Panic Attacks, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2019-08-11 06:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 50,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16470818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayjaybird/pseuds/jayjaybird
Summary: The crown was waiting on Mal’s desk when they walked into the classroom.Evie felt Mal stiffen the second she crossed the threshold, and both girls flung out an arm to prevent Jane from entering the room after them. Evie could feel the press of the crowd behind them, their disembodied voices hissing at her to let them through. She could feel the eyes of the other students weighing down on her, raking her over for faults and flaws.In which Evie struggles with society and Auradon struggles with a plague.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! Welcome, or welcome back! If this is your first time reading the series, I strongly suggest that you read the previous work 'run boy run (tomorrow is another day)' first, as it lays a lot of the groundwork for things that happen in this story. Happy reading!

xxxi.

The crown was waiting on Mal’s desk when they walked into the classroom.

Evie felt Mal stiffen the second she crossed the threshold, and both girls flung out an arm to prevent Jane from entering the room after them. Evie could feel the press of the crowd behind them, their disembodied voices hissing at her to let them through. She could feel the eyes of the other students weighing down on her, raking her over for faults and flaws. Evie moved first, clearing the doorway and dragging Mal and Jane with her. She was too tired to draw anyone’s ire this morning.

Mal stalked over to her desk, circling it like a bird of prey searching for the right place to strike. The crown was dull and mangled, shoddy in its construction and ugly in its design. It looked as through someone had simply twisted strips of metal together to form a circlet, small _fleur-de-lis_ decorations affixed to it with rusty screws. It was a parody of the crown Ben had worn for his coronation, stripped of all meaning and beauty and ceremony.

Evie crept closer, keeping Jane a pace behind her. She could taste iron on her tongue, the scent as strong and metallic as blood, and she realized why Mal was so shaken.

It was a cold iron crown for their future fae-queen. It was poison to Mal. It was a threat and a curse and a promise of more difficulties to come.

Mal raised her textbook, her teeth bared in a snarl, ready to swat the crown across the room without letting it touch her skin. From the corner of her eye, Evie saw a group of girls huddled in the corner of the room, watching the show with cold amusement in their eyes. Countesses and young ladies of court, their dresses fine and their hands soft, with blessed childhoods and doting parents. Audrey stood at the center of the group, cocooned and protected by the others, her lips pressed together in a grim line.

Evie snatched the crown before Mal could send it flying – she heard Jane gasp out “Evie, be careful!” – and settled it onto her head. She had no magic for the iron to corrupt, and she wouldn’t give the others girls the satisfaction of knowing they had gotten to Mal. She tilted her head, posing so that the sunlight would shine on her hair, so that her best features would be on display.

“What do you think, girls?” She raised a hand to fuss with the crown, adjusting it _just so_. “Do I make it work?”

Jane glanced sideways, spotting the girls and putting the pieces together. Her eyes went sharp, an extra hint of blue lighting up her irises as her magic rose to the surface. Jane was not fond of bullies, whatever their royal status, and she was beginning to let it show. “Beautiful.”

Mal gave her a grateful smile, reaching out to adjust a strand of Evie’s hair, careful not to touch the metal. “You’re perfect.”

Her voice was so soft and sincere that it made Evie’s heart ache. She bit down on the urge to argue, to list off all the reasons Mal was wrong: her posture wasn’t straight, her make-up was smudged, she had almost made them all late for class because she needed to fix a tear in her skirt. Instead, she sat down at her desk and pulled out her magic mirror, holding it up to check her appearance – and bounced a beam of sunshine right into the eyes of those giggling princesses.

Evie heard a chorus of yelps from behind her. She smiled in satisfaction. If they wanted to play like Isle girls, they should know that Evie could play with the best of them.

Evie tilted the mirror to the side, scanning the rest of the classroom in its reflection. There were so many empty seats now, and the few people that were left were cutting a wide berth around her and Mal – Jane was the only one who dared sit next to them. Students had disappeared one by one over the last few weeks, their chests heaving and straining as coughs wracked their bodies. The infirmary was filling up fast; the nurses grew snappish and harried, unused to so many patients, no closer than ever to finding a cure.

Evie had seen so many illnesses pass through the Isle; there had always been someone lurking on her doorstep, ready to bargain for her assistance. But sickness on the Isle usually had an obvious cause – between the spoiled food and the rotten weather, she had always been able to identify _something_ that had caused the distress. Here there was nothing – no clear means of infection, no obvious connection between the victims, no diseases that neatly matched the symptoms that were creeping through the population

Evie reached up to adjust the crown again, wondering how many other warnings they would receive in the coming days. Too many, probably. People were afraid, and people were angry, and people were more than happy to lay their blame on the children of the Isle.

There was a sharp _smack_ from the front of the classroom and Evie flinched, fumbling with her mirror and nearly dropping it. She felt Mal’s hand squeeze her shoulder and realized that the sound had only been their teacher slamming his book onto the lectern – the teacher who was now glaring directly at her.

“If Miss Evelyn is done admiring herself, perhaps we can continue our review for final exams.”

Evie felt every eye turn towards her, a wave of laughter sweeping through the room. Watching, watching, how could she forget that they were always watching her? She felt a flush building on her pale cheeks and she ducked under the desk, hiding her mirror away, pulling out her parchment and pens. She could see Mal’s clenched fists resting on her thighs, hidden just out of sight, and nudged her in an attempt to get her to relax.

Evie emerged from under the desk and tossed her hair over her shoulder, trying to pretend that her heart wasn’t racing, that her blood wasn’t curdling with embarrassment. She waved a careless hand through the air – she had seen Audrey do this before, and tried to mimic her air of regal dismissal. “By all means, Monsieur Durand, you have my permission to begin.”

Durand scowled at her, but turned back to the board, chalk screeching as he began to scribble instructions for them. Evie straightened in her chair, crossing her ankles, squaring her shoulders, lifting her chin, making all the needed adjustments before she focused on what Durand was writing. The crown weighed heavy on her brow, straining her neck, its sharp edges digging into her skull – but beauty was pain, after all. For beauty, she had dealt with worse.

 

xxxii.

Evie’s mind was buzzing by the time the class ended, her head aching from maintaining her concentration so long – if she focused only on what Durand was saying, she would be able to recall it easily, but if she lost her focus, she would only be able to remember what she had been thinking about at the time. She gathered up her papers, even though she had taken no notes throughout the whole lecture, and shoved back her chair.

Jane reached out and caught Evie’s free hand, swinging their joined hands through the air with forced cheer. “You’ll come eat lunch with us, won’t you? They just got in a fresh shipment of fruit from Maldonia and –”

“Miss Evelyn.” Durand’s sharp voice cut through the air. “If I might speak with you for a moment.”

It was a command, not a question. Evie dropped Jane’s hand and weaved her way through the crowds, her high heels clicking against the stone floor, the sound echoing the hard thump of her heart. Her stomach churned; she was suddenly glad that she hadn’t been able to force down any food this morning.

She stopped in front of the lectern, standing at attention, waiting for his judgement.

Durand looked past her as the last few straggling students left the room, a frown on his face. Evie followed his gaze to see Mal leaning back against a desk, her arms folded, one of her feet tapping impatiently against the floor.

“Well?” Mal said. “You wanted to talk, so talk.”

“I meant _alone,_ Miss Mal. This is a private academic matter.”

Mal took a step forward, a scowl on her face, her patience clearly pushed to its limit for the day. “If you think I’m going to leave Evie –”

Evie caught Mal’s shoulder with a gentle hand, feeling her go instantly still under the touch. “It’s fine. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Mal pressed her lips together, but nodded. She wouldn’t undercut Evie by questioning her in front their teacher. “Alright. See you later, then.”

She still glared at Durand as she left the room, walking backwards in order to keep her eyes fixed on him. Jane gave Evie a sympathetic smile as she pulled the door shut behind them.

Evie regretted her insistence the moment the door clicked shut, the finality of the sound sending shivers up her spine.

Durand looked her up and down, and Evie hugged her papers to her chest, evaluating him in return. He was tall and muscular, he could probably overpower her easily – but the lectern was between them, if he made a move for her, she could bolt for the door, she could probably move faster than him – if he did grab her, she could scratch and bite and kick with the sharp points of her heels – there was a spare vail of acid in her pocket, she could use that if worst came to worst –

She was so busy playing out the scenarios in her mind that Durand’s first words flew right past her.

“I’m sorry, could you say that again?”

Durand sighed heavily, rolling his dark eyes towards the ceiling. “I asked to see your notes from today’s class.”

Evie almost bit her lip, but stopped herself just in time – if she bit her lips they would grow ugly and chapped and scarred. Instead she held herself still as stone, refusing to let her hand shake as she held out her papers to him.

Durand made an exaggerated show of reading through the blank pages, running his thick fingers down imaginary lines. “How thorough. What stunning conclusions and attention to detail. Miss Evelyn, how can it be that you have never taken a single note in my class but still receive perfect scores on your exams?”

Evie ducked her head shyly and scuffed her toe against the polished marble floor, her mind working frantically as she peered up at Durand through the heavy veil of her eyelashes. What did he want, what did he want? Innocent school girl? Innocent school girl, but not too flirtatious, nothing that would give him the wrong idea when they were alone in a classroom, not when he was in a position to bully and blackmail. “It’s a combination of good luck and good memory, Monsieur Durand.”

“Is that all?”

“I believe that is all any of us can ask for, in this life.”

“So there’s no truth to the rumors of you having cheated your way in here?” 

“None!” Evie blinked quickly, summoning tears to her eyes – a gamble, but he seemed more uncomfortable than aroused by the display. Thank goodness of the squeamishness of Auradon’s men. The hysterical edge came to her voice naturally, she didn’t need to pretend _that_ at all. “I can recite the whole lecture for you, if you want – ‘In review, High King Adam’s reign of the last twenty years’—”

Durand sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That won’t be necessary, Miss Evelyn. I am sorry to be harsh, but surely you can see why my suspicions would be aroused by the situation. From what I’ve heard from Mr. Delay and the others…We have to be careful, you know. Auradon Prep is only for the best, and we cannot lower our standards for anyone.”

_Except when they are the children of royalty,_ Evie thought, _we commoners have to work for it._ She wondered how he would react if she said what was truly on her mind, if she was more like Mal, if she could spit the truth into their faces like a snake spitting venom.

But that wasn’t what this man wanted. He wanted a girl who knew her place, who was grateful for the chance she had been given. He saw a girl who was lucky, but who was too foolish to recognize her luck. A girl too empty-headed to see how blessed she was, having such gracious teachers like himself to help her.

So that’s what Evie gave to him. She buried her own thoughts deep down and let another version of herself rise up to take their place. _This_ Evie blotted her tears away with a handkerchief, _this_ Evie mumbled a promise to do better, _this_ Evie nodded and gave him a watery smile and didn’t flinch when he patted her hand, trying to be comforting as he returned her papers.

Evie turned and strode towards the door, keeping her smile fixed firmly in place – no reason to drop a perfectly good illusion so soon after she had crafted it. She put her hand on the doorknob –

“Miss Evelyn?”

She looked back over her shoulder. Durand gestured to her head, to the crown that was shedding rust down onto her hair. “Please ensure that your headgear is less distracting next class. You were attracting some stares today.”

 

Evie pulled the classroom door shut behind her; when she turned around, she was greeted with the sight of Mal pacing the school’s corridor. Her were shoulders tense, her face as clouded as a thunderhead, her eyes glowing with barely contained magic. One of her hands was pressed tight to her chest, warding away an ache that was hidden far beneath her skin. She filled the entire corridor with a crackling energy, the feeling of lightning about to strike.

She relaxed as soon as she saw Evie, the electricity fading from the air as her magic sank back down within her. “Do I need to go hide his body?”

“He didn’t try to touch me,” Evie said, holding out her arms, putting her unharmed body on display. Everything, from the laces of her shoes to the delicate braids crowning her head, was perfectly in place. “He just wanted to tell me off for not taking notes.”

“What a fool.” Mal linked her arm with Evie’s, leading her down the corridor. “I’ll murder his final exam in your name. I’ll add a dedication page to all of my essays – ‘to my dearest Miss Evelyn –’”

“Show him what Isle girls can do,” Evie agreed. She wiggled her fingers slightly, stretching her muscles, summoning a smile, forcing the tension to leave her body. She was in control of herself – she had to be, she wouldn’t be able to survive otherwise. Her body was her instrument and her weapon, and it would do what she demanded of it.

Mal laughed, a wicked smirk on her face. “God, I can’t wait for this to be over. Do we have any plans for Midsummer yet?”

“It would be hard to do it properly with just the two of us – they’re definitely letting us stay in Auradon over the summer?”

“Ben gave his word. We’ll be staying at the school, we’ll probably have the run of the place.”

“Because no one wants to take us in.”

“Who cares?” Mal caught hold of Evie’s hands and spun her about, sending her twirling down the empty hallway. “I want some proper dancing, none of that slow-as-death stuff they’re teaching here!”

Evie turned into the movement easily, willing some lightness into her feet and some grace into her limbs. She and Mal fell into step, their feet tracing out a familiar patterns as they ducked and twisted under each other’s arms, orbiting around each other like opposing stars, faster and faster until the hallway was a blur. Mal trilled a fast wordless song, the sound echoing down the hall and filling it with life – it was bonfire dancing, it was the beat of drums and tambourine, it was long wild nights under a full moon, it was everything that Auradon seemed to disapprove of.

Evie laughed and tossed her head back, her hair flying about in a whirlwind, her heart thrilling at the familiar motions. Mal was right, soon it would be Midsummer and they would dance barefoot on the soft grass –

And then she spun to face the end of the hallway, skidding to a sudden stop at the sight in front of her: a blond girl clutching a blood-stained handkerchief to her face, supported and escorted by two nurses. They turned to look at Evie in unison – she can practically hear them thinking _shameless girl, bastard child, cheater, liar –_ and Evie fixed her posture. She clasped her hands in front of her, cast her eyes down, crushed her smile into a solemn line. The trio passed by without comment, but Evie held herself still until the sound of their footsteps faded into the distance.

“God, Mal, what are we going to do?” Her voice was far more brittle than she liked; she swallowed hard, trying to push away the tears that were rising to the surface. Her joy had fled faster than a heartbeat, and an ever-lurking despair was quick to take its place.

Mal stepped up beside Evie, her jaw set, her eyes glittering and undaunted. “We’re going to be fine. It’s just like the Isle, right? It’s all just one more thing to survive.”

 

xxxiii.

First it had been Aziz, son of Aladdin and Sultana Jasmine. He had collapsed to his knees in the middle of the courtyard, coughing so hard that he spat up blood.

The Darling children went down in quick succession, the three of them growing dizzy and faint, crashing so hard that no amount of pixie dust could have put them back on their feet.

Elisabeta de Chateaupers developed red patches on her skin, patches that flaked and peeled and itched, patches that she scratched until her fingernails were stained with blood.

Moria of Clan Dunbroch, whose muscles began to degrade, who shed weight until she was little more than a skeleton, who could no longer move from the pain of it all.

On and on it went, and now there was Alethea Kingsley with great sores welting on her fair skin, speaking in fevered tongues until she was as mottled and mad as one of her Wonderland creatures.

“Do we know anything else about her?” Evie asked, taking a step back from the wall of Mal’s room, trying to see the bigger picture. The wall had been decked with multicolored strings, each of them connecting scraps of paper like an over-grown spider’s web, trying to find any link they could between their evidence.

At the center of it all was their investigation into the wellspring – the source of all magic in Auradon, unnaturally corrupted by cold iron. Branching off from that was a series of open questions about King Adam – what was he hiding? Why was he so set against investigating the wellspring? Another branch led to the question of the Isle Barrier and the Doorways – how long would they hold if Auradon’s magic was faltering? The newest questions were related to this strange illness – what could all the victims possibly have in common? Why was it striking some students but not others? What kind of disease had symptoms this varied? How could they protect themselves?

Jay had begun referring to it as their Wall of Madness. Evie had to admit that it was a fitting title.

Mal was balanced on a stack of chairs, trying to pin up some new strings as their research crept onto the ceiling. “I’d have thought she’d be immune to most things by now. Wonderland’s wild, from what I’ve heard. Lots of strange food and drink, plenty of odd effects. It seems like it would take a lot to knock her down.”

Carlos tilted his head back, holding one of his seeing stones up to his eye. “She’s completely mundane, magically speaking. She came from another London as well, but one that wasn’t as advanced as the one they took Cruella from.”

“She wasn’t a bad sort, just off in her own world all the time.” Jay said, his voice muffled. He and Carlos were lying on Mal’s bed, Jay’s head resting on Carlos’s chest. His arms were wrapped tight around Carlos, as if Jay was afraid that he would disappear. “Dreamy. I showed her some card tricks and she said I was ‘mad as a Hatter’, whatever that means.”

“Well, she’s not wrong about the mad part,” Carlos said, his voice a teasing drawl, looking down at Jay with an impossible amount of fondness.

Jay poked him in the side. Carlos yelped a laugh and twisted to the side, rolling both of them off the bed into a tangled heap.

Evie heard them exchange a brief kiss, and she glanced away, focusing on the wall in front of her. Carlos was happy, and she was so, _so_ happy for him, but a part of her was jealous as well. Would she ever find anyone who would accept her that completely? Would she ever stop feeling sick and anxious when she thought about relationships – and everything that they entailed? What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she even feel things right? Why –

The clock tower rang out, tolling the evening hour for the whole campus to hear, startling Evie from her thoughts. Mal jumped down from her tower of chairs, her sudden movement sending the furniture toppling down after her with a thunderous _crash_.

There was a knock at the door and a voice called out from the hallway “Is everything alright in there?”

It took Evie a second to place her as Li Róng, daughter of Fa Mulan and Li Shang – there was an unfamiliar rasp to her voice, as though she had just woken from a deep sleep. The door handle began to turn, but Mal bolted to the door and leaned against her whole weight against it. With one hand, she pointed sharply at the window. “Everything’s fine! We’re just…excited for dinner!”

Jay mouthed the words ‘excited for dinner’ back at her, his expression incredulous. Mal made another gesture, this one implying that she had swift and elaborate violence planned out for him. Evie bit down on a laugh as Jay swung himself out the open window, scaling down the dorm’s wall to avoid being caught in the girl’s room. Carlos followed him, and Evie blew him a kiss before he disappeared from sight.

“Alright,” Róng replied. “I suppose I’ll see you down there.”

There was the sound of retreating footsteps. Mal slumped back against the door, massaging her temples as she stared at the Wall of Madness. “Honestly, Eves, it might have been easier to stay on the Isle. At least there all I had to worry about was that thrice-damned son of Clayton.”

Evie hummed in response, not sure how to put her feelings into words. How could she admit that some strange and stunted part of her missed the Isle? Its familiarity, its clear-cut expectations – the respect that people had given her. Here, everyone wanted so many different things from her. It felt like she was chopping herself into pieces to keep everyone satisfied, as though she was both feeding and fending off wolves at the door.

“I do actually want to get dinner,” Mal said, pushing herself away from the door and stepping into their closet. She stripped out of her comfortable clothes and started to pull on the petticoats and layers she would need to fit in at the dining hall. She strapped twin bracers to her calves, hiding her ever-present knives beneath her skirts. Her hair flowed down her bare back, longer and thicker than it had ever grown on the Isle, a violent violet against her bone-white skin.

Evie watched her in a detached sort of way, trying to conjure up the feelings that seemed to come so easily to everyone else.  She admired the muscles that swelled in Mal’s arms, the stretch and twist of her spine, the fine bones of her hands as she did up her buttons – but was that attraction? It was no different from what she felt for a beautiful statue or an illuminated manuscript – it was a sight beautiful and well-loved, but nothing that stirred desire into her heart.

“You coming?” Mal shook her skirts into place, making a face at herself in the mirror. She had always preferred practical clothing to Auradon’s elaborate finery, but Evie had coached her until she could pull a decent outfit together for herself. There were more eyes on them than ever, and sometimes appearances had to be put first to appease the public.

Evie shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

“Want me to bring something back for you?”

“Not too much. I don’t want it to go to waste.”

Mal snorted, pulling the door open and stepping into the hallway. “Like they wouldn’t waste it anyway. Have you seen how much they throw out? And they call us wicked.”

The door clicked shut behind her, punctuating Mal’s words. Evie sighed and collapsed back onto the bed – she should go to dinner, she was better than anyone at scenting poisoned food, but she had already exhausted her tolerance for crowds today.

Evie stretched her hands towards the canopy, flexing her fingers, curling her fists. She watched the movement distantly, disconnectedly, as though she was outside her own body – these were not her own hands, but the hands of another girl who needed to clean her fingernails and soften her skin and keep herself as white as snow.

And then she stopped, her hands falling limply back to the bed, because she was accomplishing nothing with contemplation. There was work to be done.

She reached under her pillow and pulled out the grimoire – the book that been had recently stolen from High King Adam's office. It was a witch’s book, certainly, full of potions and instructions and ceremonies, but Evie could not figure out what made it so dangerous that the Beast of Auradon needed to hide it in his private quarters. The first two-thirds of the book were crammed full of notes and diagrams, written in cramped handwriting that was meant to squish as much information possible onto the page. The last third of the book was perfectly blank, the pages pure white and untouched, as though the author had been interrupted in the middle of their research.

Perhaps it was only wishful thinking, but she felt like there had to be _some_ kind of clue as to what plague was sweeping through Auradon. If she could only read closely enough, if she could decipher the text more accurately, if she could find some match to the symptoms striking down students left and right –

Well, she just needed to do better. If she wasn’t going to dinner, the least she could do was read through the grimoire again, maybe cross-reference it with some with some of the books she had memorized, try to pin down the author’s origins, maybe develop some more theories over why the writing had cut off so abruptly…

Yes, she could do better. She had to – after all, who would ever want a girl who disappointed them?

 

xxxiv.

“Evie?” Carlos tapped his fingers gently against Evie’s shoulder. “Do you want some?”

Evie blinked hard and fast, as though she was waking herself from a dream. Carlos was holding his breakfast plate out to her, cleared of everything but several delicate slices of fruit. He gave her a hopeful smile, but she could only shake her head, looking back to the half-dozen books that she had spread on the grass. Her whole body was sick with nerves: it locked her jaw tight, it closed her throat, it made her stomach rebel against the thought of food.

Her stomach was delicate at the best of times, but when she was nervous eating was nearly impossible. On the morning of their final exams, she counted it lucky that she hadn’t thrown up just from the scent of breakfast wafting through the school.

“You’re going to do fine,” Carlos said, setting the plate down between her books, ever hopeful that she would change her mind. “We’re all going to be fine, I promise.”

Evie managed to nod, but there was no point in pretending to be cheerful about it. Carlos could see right through her disguises, just as he always had. She had nothing to offer him but herself, but that had always seemed to be enough for him.

Early summer heat was already creeping into the morning, their shade evaporating as the sun climbed higher into the sky. They had sat outside for breakfast, away from all the noise and crowds, so that Evie could study in peace. But no matter how hard she tried to concentrate, the textbooks kept blurring in front of her eyes, the words melting together like candlewax. She was going to fail, she knew it, she knew it in her heart –

She didn’t notice that Carlo had taken her hand; she didn’t even notice that Mal had sat down in front of her until she began to speak. “—Evie! Evie, how do you make a peddler’s disguise potion?”

The words came automatically to Evie’s lips, the formula flashing before like it had been printed on her eyelids. “Mummy dust, essence of night, a hag’s cackle, screams of fright, wind and thunderbolts –”

“Good, how about Mockingbird Gum?”

“Mockingbird tongue, magpie eyes, frontal lobe of a parrot, sugar, tree sap, mint for flavor –”

“What can you use to treat bruises?”

“Ice, arnica ointment, aloe vera, comfrey compresses –”

“See? Your brain works fine. This test is nothing. You’ve done harder in your sleep.”

“It can’t be any worse than dealing with an injured Anthony Tremaine,” Jay added, flopping down on the grass beside them.

Evie blinked, her world came back into focus. Mal was leaning close to her, her eyes dark with concern. She and Jay were both covered in sweat, faint bruises forming on their skin – apparently they had dealt with their stress by sparring the whole morning. God, if Fairy Godmother frowned on boys and girls sharing rooms, Evie could only imagine how she would react to Mal and Jay in an all-out brawl.

“Come on,” Mal took hold of Evie’s hands, hauling her to her feet. A rush of dizziness struck Evie as she stood up, almost sending her right back to the ground. “Let’s get to the main hall, get you settled before they start to call everyone in.”

 

The main hall was one of the grandest parts of the school. Its peaked roof vaulted high overhead, decorated with intricate carvings; its stained glass windows flooded the room with colored light. It was normally reserved for feasts and festivals, but it also served as a testing center for the school-wide final exams.

Neat rows of desks stretched up and down the length of the hall, each one laden with an inkwell and pen. The children of the Isle had taken seats at the very back of the room, to better observe the others and stay near the exits. Students trickled into the room in small groups, quizzing each other in hushed voices, sliding into the seats near their friends. There were so many empty seats, about half the desks were empty by the time everyone was settled.

Evie sat statue-still in her chair, tension ratcheting higher with every breath she took, with every tick of the clock. Her fists were clenched so tightly that she could feel her nails cutting into her palms, long and sharp enough to draw blood. The proctors would come in last, so that no-one would get a head start on the test – all she could do was wait, and wait, and wait –

“Eves,” Carlos reached out, tapping a finger against the back of her hand, prodding her into uncurling her fists. “Look at this,”

He moved his hands into a series of shapes, some of them mimicking the shape of written letters. His face was stretched into a wide grin. “It’s for talking with your hands! I found a book in the library, it’s got way more signs than the ones we came up with on the Isle.”

Evie seized on the distraction, already lifting her hands to copy him. “Show me again.”

“Here, it goes ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ –”

Evie felt a hand clamp down on her shoulder, felt strong fingers dig into her flesh. She nearly screamed out of instinct but stopped herself just in time. Jay and Mal were already halfway out of their chairs; Jay had one foot planted on his desk, ready to vault over to her aisle.

Evie craned her head back, looking into the harsh eyes of Monsieur Durand. She made a sharp motion with her hand, freezing Jay and Mal in place. Attacking a teacher was the worst thing they could do at this moment.

“Miss Evelyn, I know that you have been warned about the consequences of communicating during tests.”

Evie’s breath caught in her throat. Everyone had turned in their chairs to watch the commotion; she had no idea who to be under all those eyes, all the different and hateful expectations they had of her. Chad Charming, his face positively gleeful; Audrey, her eyes cool and blank. Doug, the only one turned away, his eyes cast down in embarrassment. She opened her mouth, but only a stuttering, choked noise came out: “I – I – I’m –”

“The test hasn’t even started!” Carlos stood up, grabbing Durand’s other arm, his small frame dwarfed by the man’s height and bulk. “And it was my fault, I’m the one who started it –”

“No, he didn’t!” Evie finally gasped out, forcing the words past her throat, praying that Durand wasn’t one for physical discipline. If he hurt Carlos, there was no force in the world that would stop Evie from attacking him – it was a fundamental part of her, as automatic as blinking or breathing.

“Mr. de Vil, this doesn’t concern –”

“She didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Let go of me, or you’re going to regret –”

Evie twisted under Durand’s grip, catching sight of Mal’s eyes glowing green, of Jay whispering something under his breath. Things were spinning out of control and all the others were just watching, their eyes hard, watching them get what they deserved –

“What is going on here?”

Fairy Godmother’s stern voice rang out through the hall, bouncing off the stone walls and silencing them as surely as if she’d cast a spell. Jane clutched her mother’s arm; her short hair was mussed, her breath coming hard. From the look of it, she had sprinted through the school and forcibly dragged her mother to the great hall.

Durand released his grip on Evie, taking a sharp step back. Carlos rushed forward to fill the empty space, taking up a defensive position on Evie’s left side, while Mal moved in on her right. Jay was seated too far away to move without being seen a threat, but Evie could see him taking point, his eyes darting from side to side as he calculated the best escape routes, if it would worth it to break a window, how many students might actually hinder them if they needed to move.

“I’m waiting for an answer, Monsieur Durand.” Fairy Godmother strode down the aisle, her shining silver robes fluttering around her feet. She was short and soft – an ever-present smile had carved wrinkles into her pillowy cheeks - but her tone brooked no argument. “I’m sure there must be a reason for all this commotion. Jay, dear, please sit at your desk properly.”

Jay looked to Mal, only sitting down when she gave the barest of nods. Carlos slid back into his seat as well, gripping the sides of the desk so hard that his knuckles turned white. Evie couldn’t tell if he was trying to keep himself from sprinting out of the room and hiding, or from launching himself at Durand – probably some combination of both, honestly.

Durand cleared his throat, turning to face Fairy Godmother. “Metrodora, I have reason to believe that these four were conspiring to cheat on the final exam, by way of hand signals to each other. Miss Evelyn already has a record of cheating in previous exams –”

“She does not.” Mal interrupted, her voice chill as winter frost. “She has a record of knowing the books better than you do, and quoting them word for word. Remembering is not a synonym for cheating.”

“Mal,” Fairy Godmother said, her voice kind and condescending. “We should let Monsieur Durand speak first. Taking turns is a nice thing to do, remember?”

Evie watched as a set of fine cracks appeared in the stained glass window overhead. Mal’s magic was slipping from her control, along with her tenuous grip on her temper. “Show me your evidence then.”

“Mr. Delay has reported her using a magical device to obtain answers during class sessions.”

“And Chad Charming had Evie do his work for him!” The cracks splintered across the colored panes like a spider’s web. “Or are you too stupid to recognize her handwriting on two sets of worksheets?”

“Mal, dear, that language is uncalled for, as are those accusations –”

“Actually, I forged his handwriting,” Evie said softly. She felt so distant from everything, as though her true self was floating outside her body. The thing sitting at her desk was just a shell, a blank canvas, a mirror to reflect people’s wishes. “I thought it would be more convincing.”

“See, she admits to being part of a conspiracy!”

“All hells below, do you even hear how biased you sound?” Mal stepped toe-to-toe with Durand, her hands clenched into fists. She was still wearing the sweat and bruises from her sparring with Jay, her blood still hot from the fight. It didn’t matter that he was a head-and-a-half taller than her, she had fought worse on the Isle.

“Everyone knows that she’s a witch –”

Fairy Godmother clapped her hands, the sound ringing sharply through the air and silencing all parties. “Well, I think I have a solution for this nonsense. Evie will take her exam up on the dais, where the proctors will be able to keep a close eye on her. She will take the exam, and there will be no cheating by _anyone_ and then this whole situation can be put to bed.”

Mal looked at Evie, waiting for her response. Evie knew that if she said ‘no’, then the others would fight for her, and they would lose, and they would be called before the Beast and sent back to the Isle before the day was done. What else could she do but force a smile, make her voice light and sweet? “Whatever Fairy Godmother believes is best.”

“Good girl.” Fairy Godmother said, sweeping her way to the dais. The other proctors were beginning to shuffle in, taking their seats at the high table. “Monsieur Durand, please bring a desk for her to the high table.”

Evie followed her, letting her eyes grow unfocused, unseeing. She did not dare look at the other students, did not even want to look at her friends after all the trouble she had caused for them. She was growing dizzier with each step, sharp-clawed hunger digging into her ribs and slipping up her spine. Her hands were bloodless, cold and stiff. But she could see herself from the outside, as well, and her face betrayed none of her feelings – that was all that mattered, after all.

Laughing caused crow’s feet. Frowning caused wrinkles. Crying blotched your skin, screaming ruined your voice. But no one could ever fault her for looking perfectly, exquisitely empty.


	2. Chapter Two

xxxv

Evie pressed her hands to her mouth, muffling the scream that she could no longer hold in.

She'd interred herself in the library’s underground study rooms, where the most delicate manuscripts were hidden from the sun’s glaring rays. She was hiding, under the desks, deep in the dark, afraid that she would crumble to pieces if she stepped into the light, just like those perfect preserved manuscripts.

She had finished their test. She had slapped the complete booklet down onto the proctor’s desk. And she was sure she had failed.  

She had strode from the room. She had ignored the sneers and stares of the other students. She had been the first one to finish the test. And she was sure that she had failed.

She had slammed the great doors shut behind her. She had heard the shatter and shriek of falling stained glass, shaken loose from the windows. And she was sure that she had failed – or that they would find some way to fail her. She would be expelled, sure as fact, sure as anything – and the others would follow her – and they would be sent back to the Isle – or they would run and be hunted down like dogs, just like their parents – and she had failed – she had failed – she had failed –

Her thoughts came in jerks and stutters, and her heart jerked and stuttered in response. Evie let out another wail, her chest heaving as she struggled to draw breath, the sound slipping through her fingers and echoing off the walls. She wanted to claw her fair skin off her body, she wanted to tear her hair out by the roots, to punish herself – but those things would make her ugly, she couldn’t do those things no matter how much she wanted. But she could scream, at least screaming was allowed to her.

She shut her eyes tight, praying for the dizziness to overtake her, for her hunger to swallow her whole. The others would find her, they would keep her safe, but she wanted oblivion, she wanted unconsciousness, she just wanted everything to _stop_ –

“Evie? Is that you? Are you okay?”

Doug’s voice broke through the whirlwind of her thoughts – she cut herself off mid-thought, mid-sob, twisting her head to look at him. He was crouched by the desk that she was hiding under, but could move no closer; there was only room for her in the leg-space of the desk. He held out a clean handkerchief and she accepted it silently, dabbing the tears from her eyes without smearing her make-up.

“That was a pretty hard test, huh? Especially with –” Doug fumbled with his words for a moment, eyes wide behind the lenses of his glasses. “I mean, they could have found a better way of handling that. I mean, clearly Durand should have –”

Evie busied herself with the handkerchief, folding it into neat squares as she listened to him talk, trying to find his way out from the thicket of words he had tangled himself in. _He stopped just short of saying they were wrong_ , a distant, analytical part of her noted. He wanted to be supportive, but he cared for rules and order too much to outright say that an authority had made a mistake. Even his posture reflected that: sometimes he hunched his shoulders and kept his head down, other times he stood as straight and rigid as he could, as he wasn’t sure whether people wanted the human half of him or the dwarf half of him.

“—Anyway, I’m sure you did fine.” Doug said, apparently having reached the end of a very long sentence. He stopped and actually seemed to look at her, able to see beyond the shadows with dwarven dark-sight. “Is…is that what was bothering you?”

Evie tried to smile, but she was too miserable, too faint to even do that. The tears wouldn’t stop rolling down her cheeks, no matter how hard she tried to hold them back. Why couldn’t he _leave_ , couldn’t he see she wanted to be alone? “Oh, it’s just…a bit of everything at the moment.”

“Because everyone’s getting sick?” Doug settled himself onto the floor, his legs neatly crossed. He left a respectable amount of space between them, but he did not appear to be leaving any time soon. “Don’t worry, the physicians will figure it out before you know it. No one expects you to fix it, you know, no one really believes the rumors about poison –”

Evie let out a wail, so loud and wild that Doug actually flinched back. She saw him reach out for her, then draw back, his hands fluttering uselessly in the air before tears obscured her vision again. _Of course_ no one expected her to fix anything, and that was the worst part of all. She had gone to them with treatment plans, with tests to try, with all her homespun Isle cures – and they had sent her away as though she was a foolish child. On the Isle she’d had a _purpose_ and she’d had _respect_ , and no one had dared touch or tangle with her, knowing they would need her the next time they were injured.

And here in Auradon she was nothing but another pretty face.

Her body was shaking, her shoulders quaking as she tried to draw in breath and suppress the urge to dry-heave whatever food was left in her stomach. Doug looked frightened now, but she was too far gone to care.

He wanted her? Fine, he could have her, with her hysterics and her tears and the absolute terror that always lurked just beneath the surface.

Doug started to stand, stumbling back from her as though she was some kind of monster. Evie felt darkness bleeding into her vision, like ink swirling through clear water. She was hyperventilating – she knew the signs, the feel of it, but there was nothing she could do to stop herself.

“Carlos,” she choked out, the word wreaked and strangled against her teeth. “Get Carlos,”

The last thing she saw was Doug’s feet fleeing out through the door, and then the darkness rose up and swallowed her down.

 

xxxvi.

Evie woke to see Carlos’s freckled face a few inches from hers, his face quiet and easy in sleep. They were in her room; she was under the covers and he was on top of them, just close enough for her to grab if she needed him. Jay and Mal were curled up on the other bed, Mal’s face pressed to Jay’s back, all her limbs wrapped around him like an octopus. The harsh glow of sunset broke through the curtains, painting them all fiery and golden.

She had been out for a long time. Her eyes were crusted with sleep, her mouth foul and dry with morning-breath. Her limbs were numb with exhaustion, but she fancied she could still feel the day’s grime sitting on her skin like a patina staining a painting. She glanced to the side again, and found Carlos looking at her with fear in his soft eyes.

“I’m okay,” she said, shifting closer under the covers until she could touch her forehead against his. “I’m okay, I promise.”

“I bit Doug,” was his reply, his tone wavering somewhere between pride and contrition. “He grabbed my shoulder and I panicked.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“No one that would get us in trouble.”

“That’s alright then.”

There was a long moment of quiet between them, as they breathed and settled back into their bodies, panic draining away now that they were all together again. Evie pulled herself away eventually, sitting up and running hands through her tangled hair. Her flesh was beginning to itch now, as she thought of all the dirt and dust settling onto her skin. “Run me a bath?”

Carlos nodded and rolled out of bed, leading her into the bathroom. The polished stone floor was cold under her feet, the white walls gleaming with reflected light. Evie sat down next to Carlos as he fiddled with the faucets, setting the water to the perfect temperature. The fall and splash of the water echoed against the stones, loud as thunder in Evie’s ears.

Carlos stayed by her side, leaning his head against her shoulder. They had spent many quiet evenings like this, taking silent comfort from each other as their mothers crowed and cackled together downstairs. Theirs was a relationship of small gestures – the gift of a pillow; sheets of blank paper shared between them, to be scrawled over with potion recipes and invention schematics; a hand to hold back her hair when her stomach emptied itself of food. Auradon had changed many things, but it would never be able to change the connection between them.

Carlos stood with a soft sigh, turning off the water as it neared the edge of the tub. “We’re all outside,” he said, as he walked towards the door. “Call if you need us, alright?”

“Alright,” Evie said, standing up in turn. Auradon’s fashions seemed to be built on excess, on an overabundance of fabric, and it took her a long time to get undressed. She undid all the buttons, loosened all the stays, peeled off the petticoats that weighed her down. She kept her back to the mirror, sure that she would be trapped like Narcissus if she looked, her whole evening wasting away as she examined herself for flaws.

She sank down into the water, the heat enveloping her, warming her from the outside in. There had been many amazing experiences when they had first arrived in Auradon, but hot baths had been Evie’s favorite. There were precious few sources of clean water on the Isle, and no one had the time or resources to waste on heating a bath. She and Mal had washed in ice-cold waterfalls, guarding each other against prying eyes, moving quickly before the water could freeze them to death.

On their first night in Auradon, Evie had watched her bathwater turn gray from the dirt ingrained on her skin. She had emptied the tub and refilled it and watched the water darken once again, and she had been so, so ashamed. No wonder the other students had stared at her, no wonder they mocked her claim to royalty, no wonder she had never earned her mother’s approval. She had been Isle-stained from the start. Their hands had never been clean, they never even stood a chance.

The steam from the bath left Evie feeling light-headed and empty; she embraced the feeling, closing her eyes and letting the water take her weight. Time crept by like a thief, marked only by the slow cooling of the water. Evie shut her eyes, the world going black for a split-second – perhaps she slept, perhaps unconsciousness took her again, perhaps she only blinked – before the knock on the door disturbed her.

“It’s me,” Mal said, her voice muffled by the door.

Evie lifted a hand from the water, feeling the bathroom’s cold air shock her skin. The difference in temperature raised goosebumps on her flesh. “Come in.”

Time seemed to lapse in strange, jolting ways; one second Mal was outside, the next she was kneeling by the bathtub, holding out a bowl of fruit to Evie. Plump blueberries stood out against the white china, their skins glittering with sugar crystals. Evie felt hunger rise and twist in her stomach, but eating seemed like too much of an effort right now. “So what happened while I was out?”

“You finished the test first and left, Doug finished after you and must have gone after you. Sorry we didn’t finish it faster, I should have stopped him.”

“It’s alright.”

“Anyway, he came running back to find Carlos, Carlos bit him – he didn’t break skin, at least – and then we finally got Doug to spit out what was going on with you, so we passed him off to Jane and got you back to the dorms before anyone else could see.” Mal balanced the bowl of blueberries on the edge of the tub, giving Evie a pointed look.

Slowly, Evie plucked a few berries from the bowl, watching Mal frown at her hesitation. “Eves, you’ve got to eat more. No one is going to poison us in Auradon, I swear.”

Evie licked the sugar from her fingers, feeling the crystals crunch against her teeth. “Hunger keeps me sharp.”

“Only up to a point.”

Mal’s rubbed a hand over her face, hiding her exhausted eyes. Mal had grown thinner over the last few months, her cheekbones peaking sharply beneath her pale skin. Although her strange coughing fits hadn’t made an appearance for quite a while, she had taken on a strained and haggard aspect, a weariness that never seemed to leave her. Evie instantly felt guilty for adding to her worries. “I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks.” Mal dipped her hand into the water, making it ripple and eddy around her fingers. “Finish those and I’ll do your hair.”

Evie made quick work of the rest of the blueberries, staining her fingers purple with their juice. Soon Mal’s strong hands were in her hair, working the soap into a lather and massaging it into her scalp. Evie tipped her head back so that it could be rinsed out, and caught sight of a few designs that had appeared on the steam-fogged mirror. Little doodles of wands and crowns, flowering trees and aimless patterns. “Mal, do you _have_ to draw on the mirrors?”

“Yes.” Mal said instantly, dumping another cup of water over Evie’s hair. “They’re surprises for you.”

“Secret messages,” Evie said, and comprehension flashed in her mind like lightning. Mal yelped as Evie stood up suddenly, sending a small tsunami of water splashing over the edge of the tub. Dizzy from the sudden rush of cool air, Evie staggered out of the bathroom, barely stopping to wrap a towel around her body.

“I need a match!” she cried, rushing back into the bedroom.

Jay didn’t even blink at her half-dressed state, the sudsy-wet hair plastered to her back or the small lake’s worth of water dripping onto the floor. He reached into his pocket, pitched a box of matches to her and went back to shuffling his trick decks without missing a beat.

Evie crouched by the table, her hands shaking as she struck the match and held it to a candle’s wick. Carlos shuffled over, weighed down by Dude’s furry little body in his arms. “What are we doing?”

“Do you remember,” Evie said, watching as the flame caught and grew, wavering under the force of her breath. “all those times we made invisible ink?”

Mal sat down on the other side of the table, watching as Evie held the grimoire’s first blank pages over the candle flame. Jay’s cards vanished between his hands as he moved to her side. Evie turned the book over on the table and the four of them watched as a spidery script appeared on the blank pages, as though written by some invisible hand.

 

xxxvii.

Ben blinked hard as he stepped out into the sunshine, the world blindingly bright after the darkness of the offices. Summer was coming in fast, filling the air with a white-hot heat. The school’s courtyards were deserted – most people had fled inside at high noon, and the whole school seemed sullen and silent.

Ben stepped out onto the grass, feeling the day’s warmth sink into his tired bones. Lately his days and nights had been spent hunched over a desk, reading accident reports and updates from physicians, plotting out every single theory of the disease. He should still have been in his office, honestly, catching up on his correspondence – but Mal had sent for him, and he was not so fixated on his work that he would pass up the chance to see her.

The children of the Isle always seemed most comfortable on the outskirts of things, and so Ben found them at the edge of the garden, hiding in the meager shade of the cherry trees. Jane and Carlos were stretched out on the grass, playing some kind of card game. They both nodded to Ben as he walked up and he couldn’t help but smile in response. Once upon a time, Jane would have leaped up to greet him, stumbling over her feet and words in her haste. In the last few weeks she had seemed to become more composed, more assured – she was at home within herself in a way he had never seen before.

Mal was leaning back against a cherry tree, an open notebook in her hands, a pen bleeding ink smears onto her skin. Ben sat down next to her and she tipped her head onto his shoulder without a word, her eyes falling shut against the sunlight. Her notebook was full of small sketches – portraits of her friends, Auradon’s gardens resting side-by-side with Isle streets – but today she had only drawn a few bare lines and then stopped, as though she was afraid of wasting paper on a bad design.

“Are you doing alright?” Ben asked. Mal let out a wordless grumble, smushing her face further into the soft fabric of his jacket.

“Fae empathy,” Jane said, laying a card down on the grass and causing Carlos to swear. “It’s bothering me too, a bit, but not nearly as much as Mal.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Ben said, pressing a hand to her cheek, drawing back a little so that he could take a closer look at Mal’s face. Her forehead was creased in a frown and she looked paler than usual – which was really saying something. His hands twitched against her skin, wanting to help but having no idea what to do about the situation.

Mal cracked her eyes open, raising one hand to massage her temple. “It’s not normally a bother, but everyone is feeling sick and miserable at the moment and they’re projecting it for everyone to hear. I’ve had to deal with worse on the Isle, trust me, it’s just been a while.”

“So you can only pick up collectives?”

“It depends. It’s stronger if I’m close to people, emotionally or physically, or if _someone_ ,” she raised her voice, tilting her head back and staring into the treetop above her, “ _is shouting things right at me!_ ”

There was a rustle of leaves, a shower of flower petals, and then Jay swung down before them, hanging upside-down from the tree by his knees. He had a block of rich dark wood in one hand, a carving knife in the other, and he pointed the knife at Mal. “We’ve been over this, Mal. We’re partners, partners suffer together, and if I have to have that stupid _Prince Ali_ song stuck in my head, so do you.”

Mal raised her pen – possibly to flick ink on him, possibly to stab him, Ben couldn’t tell – and Jay swung himself out of the way. Ben could hear him snickering over their heads, and humming a familiar tune. Mal levered herself to her feet, evidently ready to climb to his level in order to shut him up, but Ben took hold of her hand. “Wait, you can read minds?”

Mal sat back down, frowning at her notebook as she began to draw again. “No, I get more emotion than images or words, but songs are powerful. There’s a reason that they stick in your head – rhyme, rhythm, whatever. They want to move from person to person.” She held up her notebook, showing him a rough sketch of a group of people dancing around a bonfire, tambourines and claves in their hands. “Few things bring people together like music.”

 Ben examined the sketch, recognizing one figure by her dark hair and bright smile, and then realized that something was missing from their group.

“Where’s Evie?”

Jay swung back down, his clever hands carving into the block of wood even though he was upside down. “She’s inside, doesn’t like the heat. Makes her worry about her skin. Jane, how’s this look so far?” He held up the block of wood; it had grown far thinner under the work of his knife, shaped into a proper magic wand.

“Perfect, thank you.”

Jay disappeared again, sending a shower of wood shavings down on them. Mal sneezed, frowned at herself, and then leaned closer to Ben. “That’s also what I wanted to talk about. Evie found something in that grimoire and we need to investigate it as soon as possible. How soon until school is over?”

Ben sucked in a sharp breath, bracing himself. “About that…”

Mal’s eyes narrowed. She set down her pen and flipped her notebook shut, turning her full focus on Ben. He could practically feel the heat radiating from her gaze, sweeping down through his body like a forest fire hopping from tree to tree. “About what?”

“My father and Fairy Godmother have decided to keep all the students at school, under quarantine, rather than risk spreading this disease to other worlds. No one is going to be going in or out of the school without express permission.”

Mal’s face closed off, her expression suddenly as inscrutable as a mask. She shut her eyes, but he could see the rapid movement beneath her eyelids, her eyes darting from side to side as she calculated all the different angles. Ben felt his heart stutter in response – she could have been cut from marble, still except for the flutter of her eyelids and the pulse throbbing in her throat. She was like the calm eye of a storm, just one heartbeat away from unleashing chaos. “How soon is this going into effect?”

“Not immediately. They’re announcing it in three days, before the end-of-semester feast.”

“Is this because of the Barriers?”

“Possibly. It’s a reasonable strategy to prevent the spread of disease, but they may also want to avoid the risk of the doorways faltering while the students are traveling home.”

“Where will you be staying?”

“I’ll be here, with you.”

Mal’s eyes snapped open, evidently done running the scenarios through her head. She let out a trilling whistle, like the cry of a bird, and Jay was on the ground in front of them before Ben could even blink. Carlos folded his cards and raced over, his movements quick and poised as a hunting dog. Jane got to her feet; she moved slower than the others, but her jaw was still set in determination.

Mal turned to Ben, taking his hand. “I think I’ve got a plan.”

 

xxxviii.

Evie bent over the desk, copying over the grimoire’s hidden notes onto blank paper so that they would have some easy accessible record. Candles were lit all over the desk, clouding the air with their luxurious perfumes, the different scents mingling together in a heady fog. Her pen scratched softly against the paper, the only sound in the heavy humid silence, and Evie found her eyes falling shut, hypnotized by the strange atmosphere even as she traced out sentence after sentence.

The pen had left a single wet smear of ink on her pinky finger, and later she would have to scrub and scrub and scrub until her skin was clear again. Her hair was tangled, itching at her scalp; sweat was trailing down her neck. All these sensations rushed by her as she worked, connected to her body but disconnected from her mind, which was focused on creating a perfect reproduction of the grimoire’s strange sharp notes.

There was a tap at the door, one quick sharp knock that told her that Mal was outside, with friendly company.

“Come in,” Evie called, not pausing in her work. She was as diligent as an automation – hold book to flame, memorize the words that appeared, dip pen in ink, write and write and write – and she hardly even noticed when Carlos laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, trying to ease the tension that wracked her frame.

“I have no idea how you’re comfortable in here,” Jane muttered, stepping over to the windows and twitching open the heavy curtains. They had been closed for secrecy’s sake and to stop the slight breeze from blowing out the candles – and to stop the sun from touching Evie’s skin. They had trapped all the heat in the room, adding to the haze and the swelter.

Evie sat up, feeling her muscles stretch and stain under the pressure of Carlos’s hand. Was she comfortable? When was the last time she had ever been comfortable? Perhaps when she was unconscious, when there was no need to think or feel. When there was no way to get lost in the labyrinth of her thoughts as they wound in and over themselves, spiraling and spiraling and spiraling –

“Oh, Ben, it’s so good to see you! We’ve all been missing you,” Evie stood up and threw her arms around Ben, nuzzling her head down against his shoulder and feeling the gold braid of his jacket press into her cheek. He had been kept so busy lately, assigned task after task by his father, and it felt good to have his steady presence back among them.

She began to draw back, but Ben caught hold of her hands, holding them tight. “Evie, I am so sorry about what happened –”

Evie shook her head, freeing one hand and pressing a finger to Ben’s lips. “Don’t be silly, there wasn’t anything you could do. It’s in the past, anyway, there’s no point in making a fuss.”

“But –“

“Ben,” Mal said, her voice firm but kind. “Let it go. She doesn’t want to think about it and we don’t need you looking any more biased than you already are.” 

Ben pressed his lips together, but nodded, falling back to Mal’s side as though called to her by gravity. Evie looked around the room: Jane had taken the other desk chair; Jay was sitting by the window, keeping watch for intruders; Carlos had taken the bed, his face buried in Dude’s wiry fur.

“What’s going on?” Evie sat down again, gathering up her stray papers and shuffling them into some sense of order. “I’m not nearly done with the transcription.”

“Our deadline’s been moved up.” Mal began to pace the floor, her feet silent as she made circuit after restless circuit of the room. Evie felt something familiar inside her settle into place – this was Mal in charge, this was Mal in her element, and the rest of them were swept up in her energy. “I’ve got the start the start of a plan, but things are going to going to be risky and everyone needs to be fully informed about what’s going on. Evie, the main points?”

Evie shut her eyes rather than scramble through each of the papers, watching the needed words flash before her. “’ _I have received strange visitors, asking strange questions about this land and this magic. They have accents I have never heard. They are suspicious of my books and instruments. I fear they are watching me even as I cannot watch them.’_ Then one week later: ‘ _I have a plan, to escape these unwanted attentions, to gather the time I need to fix myself.’_ Two weeks later: ‘ _Something abnormal is happening here, there is a silence I’ve never noticed before, some fundamental element that has disappeared like the drone of insects that vanishes during the winter.’_ One week later: ‘ _My eyesight is worsening. I must cast this spell now or lose my chance forever.’_ And that is where our diarist stops.”

“And what exactly does that mean?” Jane asked. She swept her hair back from her face, tying it out of the way, and started to poke through the pile of papers on the desk.

“It means that there was a witch in Auradon.” Mal said. “And I want to know what she knows, and why her grimoire ended up in the High King’s study.”

Evie rubbed at the ink on her hands, watching as it sank further into the fine lines of her palm. “So what happened to our deadline?”

Mal turned to Ben and Jane, stilling her movement even though she still vibrated with pent-up energy. “Well, based on some maps drawn in the grimoire, we’ve got a rough idea of where she was dwelling. We were going to wait until the school closed for the summer and then sneak out while everyone was distracted.”

“But?”

“But now the school is remaining open under quarantine, we’re going to be surrounded by people watching us for suspicious activity, it’s going to be harder to leave and reenter the school unnoticed and the consequences will be far more severe if we get caught.” Mal twisted, looking from Evie to Jay to Carlos, meeting each set of eyes with a calm gaze. “That’s why we’re deciding this together. This is important, but I’m not risking getting us sent back to the Isle unless everyone is on board. Let me hear it.”

“I’m for it,” Jay said instantly. He had taken out his carving knife and was twirling it through his fingers, watching the light catch and shine on the blade. “Look, there’s something wrong with Auradon, and if things keep going like they are it won’t matter if we’re on the Isle or not. Either way, we’ll end up sick, or starved, or cut off from all the other worlds we could escape to.”

Evie looked to Carlos and Carlos stared back, tilting his head slightly in question. Evie knew that her answer would inform his – and as strong as Carlos was, he still had so much to fear from Cruella. To risk sending him back to the Isle was terrible, but they also risked it with every violent sparring match, each careless touch and hidden weapon, every day that they were themselves. And Evie was so, so tired of pretending. Some days she wasn’t sure who she was at all, but she knew she wasn’t this stranger who fretted and fainted and forced herself to smile – she was sure, in that moment, that she would die if that was all she had the chance to be.

“I’m in too,” she finally said, the words spilling from her mouth in a flood, in search of some rational justification for her decision. “Mal, you’ve already been threatened once –”

“What?” Ben had been silent through the whole discussion, but now he leapt to his feet and caught hold of Mal’s arm. “Who threatened you? When did this happen?”

“Earlier this week,” Mal said, her eyes darting away in something like guilt. “I was going to tell you, once we had all this sorted out.”

Ben took a deep breath; it took a visible effort for him to relax his hands, to release the tension from his shoulders. He exhaled and all the fear and surprise left him, and it left him seeming smaller than before, as though he had transformed from boy to king and back again. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“Yes, I promise.”

“Alright. My apologies,” he added to the room at large, taking a step back and sitting down. “Please, continue.”

Mal took a deep breath, her eyes flickering across the room. “Carlos?”

“I’m in.” Carlos said, and said nothing more. There was a new calm in his eyes, one that lent him a solemn stillness, so different from his usual fight-or-flight energy. Evie felt something in her heart twist. All of them were changing, bit by bit; as much as she welcomed it for the others, she could only fear it for herself.

Mal turned to face Ben and Jane. “And you two?”

Jane looked up from her papers, startled. “Oh, goodness, I didn’t know that we counted –”

“We’re probably going to need your help with this, and you’re still running the risk with us.” Mal shrugged, the casualness of the gesture entirely at odds with the trust she was extending. “Of course you count.”

“Then I say yes,” Jane said. “Yes.”

Mal glanced at Ben, her eyebrows raised.

“I stand with you,” he said. “However you vote, I vote as well.”

“Alright then,” Mal licked her lips, drawing herself up to her full height. She was strong and beautiful, shining in the sunlight. Evie could only wish that she had Mal’s confidence, her certainty. “I’m in. Let’s get to work.”

 

xxxix.         

“So,” Ben said, his face falling into light and shadow, light and shadow, as they walked past the tall windows that lined the school’s hallways. His voice broke Mal from her thoughts and plans – they had all the basics, but they still needed a suitable distraction that would allow the others to slip out undetected. “When were you going to tell me that you’d been threatened?”

“Eventually,” Mal said, not even trying to hide the guilt that crept into her voice. The first and last rule of their relationship was to be honest with each other, and she had been trying so hard to keep that promise. But there were some things that were so familiar to her, so commonplace on the Isle that they hardly seemed worth mentioning – at least, that was the excuse that she had given herself. “I’ve dealt with worse.”

“That’s not the point,” Ben said – not angry, but sad, and that was even worse. “You shouldn’t have to deal with it at all. Please, just tell me who it was and I’ll make sure that it won’t happen again –”

“You don’t understand –”

“Then help me understand!”

Mal caught hold of Ben’s hand, jerking him to a stop. He was fair and shining, strong and good, everything that she never had the chance to be. She had moved through the world’s darkest shadows, seen every possible shade of grey, and she was so afraid of dragging him down into the darkness with her. “It’s Audrey, alright? And I struck the first blow in this war, and she’s got every right to retaliate. A girl’s only got her pride, I’m not going to take that from her.”

“But I’m the one who broke up with her. Why isn’t she taking it out on me?”

“She’s still in love with you, obviously. She can’t win you back if she’s sending you poisoned crowns. She’s angry with you, but I’m the one she hates and you’ll only make it worse if you come down on her about it.”

Ben sighed and scrubbed his free hand across his eyes – there was already a worry line developing right between his eyebrows. Mal felt a sudden pang of sorrow; he’d had a better youth than she’d had, but he’d never really gotten to be a child. “It’s alright. I can deal with it. It makes me respect her a bit more, honestly, I didn’t think any of you Auradonians would have the guts to threaten anyone.”

“For God’s sake, Mal –” Ben began to speak, paused for a moment, and then started again. “You’ll let me know if she does anything truly harmful?”

“Yes.”

 “Okay. Alright. This is totally fine then, I’m fine, you’re fine –”

And that was when Mal felt a splitting pain in her head, like a sharp noise that was spiking, over and over again, straight into her ears. She clapped her hands over her ears, but it did nothing to block out the sound – if anything it rose in pitch, higher and higher, until it was a single searing note that never paused or broke. It felt like her skull was vibrating at the same frequency, like all her bones were about to break and shred her skin like shrapnel. “Oh hell,” she gasped out. “Hell and damnation, why can’t any of you people deal with pain?”

She staggered down the hallway, eyes shut tight against the sound. It sharpened, so precise that it felt like white hot needles stabbing into her brain. There was a bright light behind her eyelids, as though she was staring into the sun. She could only focus on one step at a time, forcing her way to the source of the feeling.

Somewhere underneath the noise ringing in her ears, she heard Ben mutter the words “Spoke too soon,” and then he took her by the arm, steadying her with gentle hands.

The noise stopped as swiftly as it started; when Mal opened her eyes, reflex tears flooded out from underneath her eyelids. She wiped them away, her movements clumsy and uncoordinated from the sudden onslaught of shared pain. “Someone got hurt, and then passed out,” she muttered, clinging to Ben’s arm, trying to orient herself again. “Come on, they’re outside,”

 

The dry grass crunched beneath their feet as they hurried through the gardens, the flowers wilting on their stems, all of nature done in by the summer heat wave. The sun blazed down on the school, a single eye with an angry gaze, but Mal felt no heat against her skin. She felt cold and clammy; her skin had gone bone white. Someone had gone into shock, and she was enduring it with them.

She dropped Ben’s hand in an effort to move faster, following the psychic echoes like a hunter would track injured prey. She rounded a corner, turning into a small stone-paved courtyard, and came to a halt.

Splayed across the ground was Li Róng, one arm twisted at an obscene angle, the other arm stretched out towards the fountain, which was splashing sparkling drops of water onto her pain-whitened skin. Her dark hair trailed across the stones, obscuring her face.

“Oh my god,” Ben said. He was already shedding his coat, draping it over Róng’s body. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, but she’s still alive, she’s just unconscious. Don’t move her!” Mal knelt down by Róng, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. There were no bruises on her face, but her hands were scraped and skinned, leaving traces of blood across the pure white stone. She had probably fallen, caught herself with her hands, hurting her arm when she caught herself, before succumbing to shock and passing out. “We need a stretcher, and something to splint her arm –”

“I’m going to get the physicians, you stay with her,” Ben took off running, gone from view in an instant.

Mal twined her fingers with Róng’s, trying not to shift her body at all. Pain was rippling off her body, an almost-visible shimmer like heat rays in a desert. For a second, all Mal could feel was anger at the king, at Auradon – did they think their pain was special? Why did they scream it out for everyone to hear?

On the Isle, pain was second-nature to children. They kept it secret and hidden away, pretended that it didn’t exist, because pain was weakness. They lied, even to themselves, and they willed it gone. They tricked their minds into accepting it as normal. They didn’t broadcast it, and consequently it was much easier for Mal to ignore her overactive empathy.

Then Róng’s fingers twitched against her hand and Mal came back to herself, forcing her anger back down. She was just a girl that needed help, same as any girl on the Isle, same as anyone else under Mal’s protection.

“Okay, okay, you’re okay,” she muttered, trying to rub some warmth back into Róng’s hand. Even in the heat of the day, her skin felt cold and clammy, like thawing ice. Mal closed her eyes and began to hum, trying to push back against the pain with some of her own calm. The sun beat down on her and time seemed to slip away, leaving her dazed and entranced. The words rose up in her unbidden, some strange tune that her mind plucked from the ether. “ _Tu ert enn so eggjandi rein – hevvur ongam veitt sár –_ ”

“Get back from her!” A hand seized on Mal’s shoulder and dragged her away; her concentration broke and another wave of pain radiated from Róng’s body. Mal sprang to her feet and turned to face her attacker, only to stop short when the physician grabbed her by the arm and gave her a shake. “What were you doing? Were you cursing her?”

“No, I was trying to help – god, splint her arm before you move her, you’re hurting her!” Mal took a step back, jerking her arm away as she brought her opposite hand down on the physician’s wrist – three inches up his arm was a nerve point that made him yelp and release his grip on her. Two other physicians were swarming over Róng, poking and prodding her like ants investigating a carcass. Róng’s eyes fluttered open, and a new wave of pain and stress washed over Mal.

She tried to push her way to Róng’s side. The physician made another grab for her, but Ben laid a hand on his shoulder before he could make contact.

“Sir Moreau, I understand that you are concerned about your patient, but there is no need to resort to assault. Mal has some experience dealing with such injuries, and she was only trying to help.” His calm words were at odds with his tight hold on the physician’s arm. Ben really was much stronger than he looked; he seemed to hold the grown man in place without any effort at all.

“I assure you, we don’t need the help of witches and fairies,” Moreau ground out the words through clenched teeth, but nevertheless he turned away and began attending to Róng, carefully setting her arm in place and wrapping it with layers and layers of bandages.

Mal took a step back from the scene, melting into the shadows that the tree branches flung around the edges of the courtyard. Her anger returned like a faithful friend, the scaffolding that straightened her spine and braced up her ribs and kept her heart beating. It was a cold and analytic anger, and with it she could see all the opportunities, all the different potential paths that unrolled themselves at her feet.

Ben returned to Mal’s side, and they watched as Róng was moved carefully onto the stretcher. She had slipped back into unconsciousness as they bore her body away, and Mal could only hope that she would be in less pain the next time she woke.

“What are you thinking?” Ben finally asked, after the physicians had disappeared and quiet had fallen onto the courtyard. It was almost as if nothing had happened at all; the only proof was Róng’s blood smeared across the stones.

Mal touched her own arm, right at the same spot where Róng’s arm had fractured. She could still feel the pain, faint and echoing down throughout the school. “I think that I found a suitable distraction.”

 

xxxx.

Mal had seen the school’s hospital once, during their first tour of the school.

The main hall had grand windows that flooded room with sunlight; bright mosaic murals decorated the ceilings, trying to bring some cheer to the patients. The beds were separated by sheer, snow-white curtains. The floor had been polished so that the white stones sparkled. It was meant to be bright and clean and merry; it was almost as if they had never expected to use it. After all, what kind of disaster could ever strike in Auradon?

But now…

Now the floor was scuffed with a thousand footprints, and no one had the time or space to polish it. Extra beds had been brought in to accommodate the sick students, leaving the hall cramped and crowded. The white curtains fluttered like ghosts; moans and cries of pain came from behind them, echoing down the grand airy hall. Nurses rushed from patient to patient, restless as flies buzzing about a corpse.

And all of it seemed to stop when Mal stepped into the hall. Every eye turned to her. The nurses pressed themselves back against the beds, shrinking away as she stalked past them to the offices. She reached the office door, looked back over her shoulder and smiled a smile that showed all her teeth. “Carry on,” she said sweetly, before opening the door and stepping into the office.

She heard a chorus of whispers rise up behind her, and at least one person exclaiming, very loudly, for someone to fetch Fairy Godmother. 

She slammed the door shut behind her, smirking with satisfaction, and turned to face the head physician – Sir Moreau, the one who had been yanking away from Róng only yesterday. She had caught him at a bad moment, clearly; his head was cradled in his dark hands, his fingers tugging at his curly hair, his broad shoulders drawn taut with tension. His desk was covered was stacked high with papers, pages and pages of notes covered in slapdash handwriting.

Part of Mal sympathized with him. The Isle had been a precarious place, always one fractured alliance away from collapsing. She had managed the chaos, on some good days she had even tamed it, but it had never let her rest.

The rest of Mal – the practical part of her, the big-picture part of her – walked up, slapped her hands down on his desk and said, “I want to help.”

Moreau lifted his head slowly and stared at her, his eyes bleary with exhaustion. “No.”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I don’t take well to being told ‘no’.” Mal dragged a chair over to the desk and sat down, making herself comfortable. “I want to help.”

“We still haven’t ruled out the possibility that you’ve caused all this.” Moreau leaned back in his chair, wagering his own stubbornness against her own.

“What reason would I do this? Do you all really think I would go through the trouble of vanquishing my mother – one of the most powerful fae in the world – make a huge show of turning good, jumping through every hoop that’s set before me, just to off the lot of you through disease?”

“One, I’m sure you had just as much reason as anyone else to get rid of your mother. Two, if you defeated such a powerful fairy, what does that say about your power? Why shouldn’t we fear you more than her? Three, mass death through disease is inconspicuous and difficult to trace. You’re a clever thing, I’m sure you can see the advantages.”

Mal frowned; she had hoped this man would be as easily manipulated as all the others in Auradon. Alas, he was clever and suspicious – no wonder he was the one actually in charge of this infirmary. “I can see them about as clearly as you can. Perhaps I should be asking you if you’ve invented this disease.”

Moreau snorted and waved a dismissive hand, beginning to sort through the nearest pile of notes. “We’re done here, fairy girl. Run along and let us get back to work.”

Mal clenched her hands around the arms of the chair; her nails dug splinters from the soft wood. Her heart was beating faster and faster, anxiety building in her chest, its sting sharper than a cursed spindle. She needed their attention to remain on her. She needed them to play the game. “You’re a fool not to take help when offered, especially from the fae. We see more, we feel more things than mortals do. We don’t get sick.”

“Really?” Moreau raised an eyebrow, pulling a folder from one of his desk drawers. “Then why do I have a report from Prince Ben, stating that you had fallen ill during the Spring Festival and were to be excused from class?”

_Damn._ “We don’t get sick but we can be injured, obviously. I was thrown from my horse and needed to rest.”

“And you convinced the prince to lie for you? What an excellent influence you are.”

His dry tone scraped against her ears like sandpaper. Mal had to force herself still – she had heard worse things than this. This man would not make her flinch. She would not give away her weak points. “You clearly don’t understand me as well as you think you do; why would I shout it to the world that I can’t do something as simple as ride a horse?”

“If you can’t do something as simple as ride a horse, why should I let you take care of people?”

“We didn’t have horses on the Isle, but we had plenty of injuries.”

“Yes, I saw the list of cures that your witch friend offered to me. Absolutely ridiculous and bordering on illegal. It’s a wonder that she didn’t kill any of you by accident.”

Moreau’s words faded out as blood began to roar in Mal’s ears, drowning out the sounds of the hospital. Heat was building behind her eyes; she knew without being told that they were flaring emerald green. She’d come in prepared for a con – to cause a scene but not be too wild, to keep their attention on her but not get herself thrown into the dungeons. But the patients were wailing out their pain and fear, the nurses were twittering and trembling like caged birds, and the insult to Evie was too much for her to bear.

“You know nothing of magic, and you know nothing of the fae, and you know nothing of the Isle,” Her mind was fragmenting, fraying, frying under the fevered heat of their fear. She could feel Moreau’s contempt for them, his anger and helplessness – could taste it like iron in the back of her throat – could feel it mirrored in herself. She couldn’t tell which emotions were his, which ones were hers. She was going to be swept away.

She clenched her fists, let the splinters stab further into her skin, trying to reconnect with her own body, trying to counter the torrent of emotion that flooded over her.

“You want to judge our survival? We kept them _alive_ and we kept them _sane_ and we dragged ourselves up from _filth_ –” she was screaming, and she was burning, burning, burning. A glass of water, forgotten and dust-covered on the edge of the desk, began to boil. Her sight seemed to white out, she navigated by sound and sensation, whirling to her feet as the door clicked open. She sensed the vibrations of Fairy Godmother’s footsteps, heard the soft gasp fall from the woman’s mouth, felt the air ripple and part as she reached out –

“If you want this to be my home, let me protect my home! If you want these to be my people, _let me look after my people!_ ” Her words were half wail, half song, ringing with rage and power and clarity. The words seemed to settle into an empty place in her chest. They were a truth she hadn’t realized until that moment: that she wanted Auradon to be hers, just as the Isle had been hers to strengthen and safekeep.

Mal felt the realization ground her. She sighed, her chest heaving; she let her muscles relax and her fists uncurl. The echoes of other minds faded away – she remembered who she was now. The heat behind her eyes faded and her vision returned. Moreau and Fairy Godmother were staring at her, their eyes wide and wary.

“Child, I realize that you’re only trying to help –” Fairy Godmother began, but Mal waved a heavy hand through the air, cutting her off.

“Watch me, then,” she said. Her voice was tired. “Watch me. Keep your eyes on me at all times, until I earn your trust. Until you’re willing to see us as we are. Because I am going to help, one way or another, so you might as well keep me close.”

She watched as Fairy Godmother and Moreau shared a look over her head, and knew that she had won her fight. Her part had been played – and now the rest was up to her friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> Thank you for being so patient with this update, and for your encouraging words on NaNoWriMo! I didn't technically win, but it did kick my butt into starting a new original project, so I'm counting that as a victory in its own right.
> 
> The song Mal sings in this chapter is Atjan by Eivor. (I've tried to post a link to the lyrics and translation as usual, but AO3 keeps removing it and I'm a little too tired to troubleshoot.)
> 
> Thank you again for all the wonderful comments and kudos! I'm so happy that everyone is enjoying the story so far, and I'm really excited to continue writing it for you. Please let me know if you have any questions, I'm always happy to answer them!
> 
> Edit - 12/20/18  
> Hello again! After some comments where people expressed confusion about what had happened after the test, I realized that I missed posting an entire section from the chapter I had written! (As I said below, it serves me right for posting things when I'm too tired to think straight.)
> 
> Hope this clears up some of the confusion, and my very sincere apologizes for missing that in the first place!


	3. Chapter 3

xxxxi.

They had left in the dark of night, moving through the humid air like ghosts, the sound of their footsteps obscured by the croaking of frogs and the buzzing of insects. People thought the dark was empty and terrifying, but Evie knew that some things were most active when no one was awake to watch them. There was life in the dark – strange and otherworldly life, but life none-the-less.

They had snuck out once before, seeking out the wellspring that corrupted the land, a place of magic that had been cursed by cold iron. It was easier this time: their feet remembered the paths they had taken to escape; the full-blooming trees offered shadows to hide in. The night air was heavy with the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle and the darkness was rich and soft as velvet. Evie felt like she was moving through a dream. Like nothing could ever touch her again.

Evie let her mind drift, floating in a half-drowsing haze.

How strange it felt, to be here without Mal – to know that she was pacing the floor – awake when she should be asleep – her hands clenched in fists – stuck with the unbearable responsibility of not knowing where they had gone, so that she would not be able to betray them if asked –

The horses’ tack jingled softly – they were blind in the darkness, but well-trained and trusting that their riders would lead them true –

The stars shone clear in the sky – hundreds and thousands of them burning up in the darkness – they had made up stories for the constellations as children –

Carlos and Jay were holding hands as they walked.

 

They mounted their horses as the first sunbeams broke over the horizon, trotting south across unkempt backroads, where flies buzzed around the horses and weeds choked their path.

They forded rivers where they could, rather than risk crossing the bridges that teemed with people. The water seemed clouded, Evie noted absently, although her memories told her the river had once been clear. It had a vaguely greasy feel to it, a residue that clung to her skin when she rinsed her hands after eating.

They stayed far away from cities and the tolling of church bells. There was no way to measure time unless they looked to the sun, leaving them with a pleasant unawareness – they answered to no one but themselves, no schedules, no classes, no prying eyes following them as they traveled.

There was an empty space where Mal should have been.

Carlos and Jay rode close together, their heads bent in some private conversation.

 

The days were long now, the sun lingering in the sky even as the hours slipped away. Evie kept her clock pulled over her head in spite of the close, sticky heat.

They approached a wood, the trees dense and impenetrable, layers of leaves filtering out the sun until there was nothing left but a strange green glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Jay tilted his head back, shaking his hair out of his face as he examined the terrain.

“Do we want to go in now, or camp for the night and explore in the morning?” His voice was casual, but he was clutching the reins tight, his hands curled into anxious fists. He glanced to his right automatically, to the spot where Mal should have been.

“We should try to make headway while we can,” Evie said, gesturing up to the sun in the sky. “We’ll have light for a while yet.”

“And we’re probably safer under cover anyway, if it gets dark. There can’t be too many people wandering around in there,” Carlos added.

They were all skirting around the unspoken words: let’s get this over with and get back to Mal.

 

The woods were dark and strange; half-forgotten paths seemed to loop in on each other and back again, leading them in dizzying circles, two steps forward and one step back. The birds did not sing, but watched them with glittering eyes, unafraid of the intruders in their forest.

Carlos raised his seeing stones to his eyes and nodded his head after gazing through them for a moment. “The outer edges of the forest is dead, but it seems like there’s magic towards the center – maybe there was a curse here once.”

They let Carlos take the lead, navigating by the scars left by dead magic and the faint traces of magic still living. Evie had no idea what he saw when he looked through the seeing stones; they only worked for him, he was the one who had earned them. He was the one who had passed trials for kindness and cleverness and bravery, and he had emerged from the darkness with a new way to see the world.

They tried to follow the river that flowed through the forest, moving carefully along the sheer banks that overlooked the silver water. Sometimes they made detours, when the underbrush grew thick with brambles and thorns; they picked their way around briar patches that would have cut their horses’ legs to ribbons. The light around them grew dimmer and dimmer, but there were no breaks in the trees that allowed them to see how far the sun had set. Evie widened her eyes, trying to make the last of the dying light, trying to memorize the landmarks around them so that they would be able to find their way out again.

And then – almost without realizing it – they stood at the cusp of the witch’s home. The cottage was in the center of a valley; the river cut halfway through the clearing, rushing over a waterwheel that was half-rotted and rusting. The cottage itself seemed a bit crooked and twisted in on itself, as though there had been an error in the architecture, some unnatural angle in the foundation. Perhaps the cottage had been snug and cozy, once upon a time; now its thatched roof was moldering and its window panes were shattered. Thick trees encircled the house, casting it in a murky shade. Red sap oozed from the trees like blood.

They stood for a moment, examining the cabin, their horses shifting in place, restless, nervous.

Jay sighed. “Damn.”

Carlos shook his head. “It’s glowing like a bonfire – there’s magic everywhere, but I don’t see anything that could be causing it.”

Evie glanced to the sky out of habit, even though the thick canopy of leaves blocked out any scrap of sky. “We should at least look inside before we give up.”

 

Jay pushed against the cottage’s door, wincing as the rusty hinges let out a shriek. Evie followed the boys inside, brushing her hand against the doorway as she went – she felt a strange dizziness, a feeling of _déjà vu,_ but no matter how much she searched her memory, she couldn’t remember ever seeing a place like this.

The inside was just as forgotten and ramshackle as the outside, but there was a curious sense of order to the whole place. No animals had made their nests there, despite the entry afforded by the open windows. The books were covered with an inch of dust, but they were still perfectly aligned on the heavy wooden shelves, waiting for someone to open them once again. A large black cauldron still hung over a fireplace, and there was a pile of rotting wood that had once served as kindling for the roaring fires. Mortar and pestle still sat on a work bench, the remnants of some ancient spice still in the bowl. Plants were creeping up through the floorboards – Evie recognized them as cooking herbs, ancestors of seeds that the wind had scattered about the cabin.

When Evie opened a door off the large main room, she found a bedroom. The bed was neatly made, undisturbed through the years, covered with a faded patchwork quilt. There might have been more, but she didn’t feel quite brave enough to trawl through this stranger’s things, through the debris of someone else’s life.

Carlos sighed and dropped the seeing stones from his eyes, blinking fast as his vision adjusted itself. “So, something went wrong here.”

Jay made circuits of the room, his hands twitching as he examined the remaining artifacts. “I don’t think she left willingly – she didn’t take anything valuable with her and she didn’t have time to order her things.”

“No sign of a struggle,” Evie noted, running her fingers over the spines of the books. She sneezed as a flurry of dust motes filled the musty air. “Maybe someone lured her away?”

“An accident in the woods?” Jay mused.

“Could she have been drugged and taken away?”

“Maybe she meant to lead someone away from here, but they caught her before she could double back.”

“God, I never realized how morbid we are,” Evie sat down on the floor, not trusting the sparse and dusty furniture to take her weight. “No wonder everyone thinks we’re strange.”

“Their loss,” Jay said, taking a lantern from his pack and lighting it up. Somehow, the cabin looked even more desolate in the golden light, with all its flaws thrown into sharp relief. “Who wants first watch?”

 

The night hung heavy around them, with a warmth that made the air thick and hard to breath. Evie had curled herself into a corner, a book settled onto her lap and the dimmed lantern at her feet. The book’s pages were age-dry and delicate; she had to turn them carefully lest they turn to dust under her hands. The words were interesting – diagrams of spells, some complicated thing involving the tides and the phases of the moon – but she could not force her mind to concentrate. She was tired but unable to sleep, her skin prickling and restless with the heat.

Her eyes kept straying to Jay and Carlos; the three of them had opted to stay together in the main room and the boys were tangled together on the floor, Carlos draped across Jay’s chest like a living blanket. Their breathing was slow and steady, peaceful as a still pond, and Evie wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. Why Carlos hadn’t shared his feelings with her. Perhaps he had just wanted something for himself, but perhaps he just thought that she would never understand.

That thought hurt, even though it held some truth. She knew how to play the part, how to flutter her eyelashes and bring a flush to her cheeks, how to play with her hair and give long lingering looks, just the right side of suggestion. But it was only a performance in the end, a feeling that was painted on as easily as her make-up, to be washed off at the end of every night and reapplied in the morning.

She had asked Carlos what the attraction felt like, once. He had struggled to find an answer, to explain something that was so innate to him and to others. Like heat, he had said, like drinking and being warmed from the inside out. Like your body has been struck by lightning. Like gravity. Like wanting, so badly that it hurts. Like someone has reached inside you and rearranged your organs, stealing your heart for themselves.   

Analogy upon analogy, when all she wanted was data – something she could quantify and analyze, something that she could construct for herself. Something that would fill the empty place inside her. His explanation had left her more confused than before. What was wrong with her, that she couldn’t even feel these simple things?

Tears pricked at her eyes, cold and itching as they trailed down her cheeks. She wiped them away hastily, let out a quick shuddering breath, and got to her feet. Her will had been so weak of late – she couldn’t even stop her own tears from falling. She opened the door gently, silently, and slipped outside before her sobs could wake the boys.

The night was coal-dark around her, the air warm and weighted against her skin. There was a bite to the atmosphere, the scent of rain on the wind and the promise of lightning in the sky; a storm must have rolled in after they had entered the cabin. A breeze rushed through the forest, rustling the leaves and making the branches sway.

Evie stepped forward, feeling the soft grass beneath her feet. _Think of something else_ , she commanded herself, trying to suppress the hysteria that was building in chest. Her thoughts swirled and circled on each other: _Think of how much worse the others had it, think of how they need you put together, think of what your mother would say if she could see you now_. The wind tossed her hair and plucked at her clothes, a whirlwind building up around her, spinning her about like an invisible dance partner.

Evie’s breath caught in her throat, the roaring wind drowning out her sobs. It was like some terrible parody of the Midsummer’s dance – no light, no music, no friends, no magic to give back to the earth. She had nothing; _she was nothing_.

The storm howled like an animal, charging through the forest like a beast on the hunt, and Evie screamed out her grief in return. She could feel her body losing itself, her limbs weak and shaking, her breath refusing to come, the darkness fogging her mind. The wind threw her back into a tree her head knocked back against the trunk there was sap-rain-blood in her hair the lightning tore down through the sky thunder cracked like a girl’s heart breaking _she wanted to be somewhere else she wanted to be someone else –_

And then there was nothing but nothingness.

 

xxxxii.

Evie woke to the sound of birdsong and the scent of apples all around her. She was on her knees and scrambling away before she was even fully aware, desperate to be away from the cloying scent of the fruit. She tumbled over tree roots, slipping on the wet grass around her. She didn’t dare open her eyes in case she would find herself back on the Isle: standing before the bowl of apples that had always rested on their parlor table, their skin red as blood, their flesh white as snow, their poisoned cores black as ebony.

But why would she hear the birds if their apples had always been kept inside? Evie took a deep breath, stilling her frantic motion, digging her nails into her palms as she braced herself. Slowly, her eyes fluttered open and she winced against the bright light in her eyes. She was sprawled across the ground, cradled in the wide-spread roots of a tree trunk. There was a tender wound on the back of her head and apples all around her; as she watched, a ripe apple fell from the tree above her and hit the ground with a solid _thump._

Hunger and nausea roiled in her stomach, twinned sensations that had become inseparable when she was a child. She forced herself to look away from the apples, turning her head to see…the witch’s cabin?

Evie blinked hard, overlaying her memories of the cabin over what she saw now, trying to see where they matched up. The cabin’s proportions were right – compact and cozy, with glinting square windows, a grey stone chimney, a waterwheel that churned and frothed the water as it turned – but this cabin was practically brand new. They were mirrors of one another, one well-loved and cared for, the other abandoned and time-forsaken. Could it be an illusion? Was it some trap for trespassers? Where were Jay and Carlos throughout all this?

What on earth had happened to her?

The sore spot on Evie’s head throbbed. She sighed and levered herself to her feet; what had happened wasn’t as nearly concerning as what needed to be done next.

 

Evie crept around the cabin, wary as a wounded animal. She peeked in all the windows, feeling a strange sense of familiarity, of unreality. The inside of the house was exactly the same configuration that they had found yesterday – but cleaner, lived-in, more put-together.

Once she was sure that no one was inside the cabin, Evie plucked a lockpick from her sleeve and made her way to the front door. She knelt down before the lock, but the door swung open the second she braced her fingertips against it.

Evie stepped inside, the wooden floor smooth and sun-warmed beneath her bare feet. She glanced around, but couldn’t find a single mirror anywhere, and settled for sitting down at the table and probing the back of her head with her fingers. Even a light touch sent pain spiking right to her temples, and her fingers came back crusted with dried blood – but she couldn’t feel any fractures, and head wounds always bled quite a bit, and so she was probably fine.

Evie rattled her way through the kitchen, twisting the tops off glass bottles until she found one with a scent so strong that it made her eyes water. Moonshine, just like they had made back on the Isle, perfect for disinfecting wounds and keeping warm during winter and stripping the barnacles from pirate ships. She grabbed a rag off the counter, poured a generous amount of liquor onto it, and applied the whole thing to her head wound.

She winced, squeezing her eyes tight against the stinging, burning sensation of the alcohol. All she needed to do was ride out the pain and then she could start figuring all this out –

“Who are you and what the hell are you doing in my house?”

Evie whirled around, pulling out one of her small knives and raising her hand to throw it in one smooth motion – only to arrest her movement and nearly drop the knife when she saw the woman standing before her. She was old, but she stood tall and proud, despite the heavy basket of apples hefted under one arm. She held a long cane, but it rested lightly in her hand; she did not lean on it for balance. Her white hair was pulled back in a tight bun, revealing a face lined with age and tanned by the sun, her thin lips pressed into a frown.

She didn’t flinch from Evie’s knife. It took Evie a moment to realize that the woman’s eyes were clouded, white tendrils like fog drifting across her irises. She was blind, or at least close to it.

Evie kept her knife in hand, but lowered it to her side. Diplomacy would probably serve her better than violence. “I am Princess Evelyn of the _Schwarzwald,_ second to the throne, currently of Auradon.”

“Ffion. Charmed.”

The woman set her basket down and walked forward, the cane tip-tapping against the ground as went. She circled Evie, seeming to inspect her even without sight.

“Is this your house?” Evie asked, her fingers twitching against the knife’s handle, unsure if this woman was a threat. There was something about her unyielding stare that left her nervous. “I’m quite afraid that I don’t know how I got here,”

“Yes, that is the question, isn’t it.” Her voice had a sing-song quality. “I’ve not had anyone visit me in a very long time. To be frank, it should be quite impossible.”

Her hand whipped out and seized Evie’s arm, her knarred hands as strong as oak, her fingers like deep roots. “Did someone send you? What are you after?”

Evie stayed so still that she forgot to draw breath, the movement of her chest aborted before she could fully inhale. She probably could have fought the old woman, probably could have killed her if she needed to, the knife was still in her hands, it would only take one quick slash across her throat –

But this pose was so familiar, made her feel so young and small and fragile, that all she wanted to do was cry.

After a long moment, she forced herself to speak. “I am sent by no one but myself. I was traveling through the woods when it grew dark. I chose to rest in your home in order to wait out a storm. When I woke this morning, I was here – it was still your home, I mean, but it was so different from the one I found last night –” Ffion stared at her, unblinking, and Evie’s composure faltered under the weight of her eyes. She stuttered and stumbled over her words, thinking for disappointed her mother would be in her. Her voice cracked and her stomach growled in the same moment, the sounds echoing in the quiet cabin.

Ffion dropped Evie’s arm and took a step back, pacing the room for a moment. She pinched the bridge of her nose as she let out a sigh, mumbling something under her breath that Evie couldn’t quite catch.

At last, Ffion turned to face her again. Her face was still fixed and stern, but her voice was calm once she spoke. “I’m sorry. As I said, it’s been many years since I’ve had company. I hope you’ll forgive my rashness.”

“Oh,” Evie said, startled for a moment, although she couldn’t quite say why. Was this some kind of trap? “Of course, there’s no harm done,” she added, as she loosened the death grip on her knife.

“Good,” Ffion nodded sharply, scooping up her basket and striding towards the table. “Here, sit. Eat. Let’s figure out what to do with you.”

 

xxxxiii.  

Mal had woken up with a racing heart and tears in her eyes, but she had chalked it up to nothing more than a nightmare that had swept through her mind in the night.

Mal had the urge to run, to run and hide and wait out the panic that filled her, but she dressed and ate and marched over to the infirmary, forcing a smirk onto her face when the younger nurses still quailed from her.

Mal’s hands had twitched, they trembled, they jerked her this way and that of their own accord. They shook so badly that she spilled a pitcher of water all over Alethea’s bedding.

Moreau had snapped at her, sent her away to boil more water, and she had been too distracted to even snap back at him. The kitchen off the infirmary was cramped and sweltering, filled with dishes that had yet to be cleaned and two nurses that were slumped at the table, devouring a lunch that they barely had time to eat. They didn’t even react when Mal turned on the tap and stuck her head under a torrent of ice-cold water.

The cold was bracing and sudden enough to shock her mind quiet for a moment. Mal shook her head vigorously and sent water droplet splattering across the room, before carrying on with filling the cauldrons and setting the water to boil. Mal forced herself to stand still in front of the fireplace, reciting the facts and figures of the disease to herself, but she couldn’t help the tension that began to build in her body. She’d had quite a bit of practice keeping her temper, but it didn’t do much to help her situation: she had been reduced to literally watching and waiting for water to boil.

Still. She was able to examine the disease up close now, which gave her more information if not more answers. There were similarities between some patients – they could be grouped into those coughed and coughed until they were being up blood; others had skin that flaked or peeled or crusted over like dragon scales; some had weakened constitutions, resulting in broken bones or deterioration in their muscles. 

And the thirst. No matter how varied their symptoms were, they would all beckon Mal closer and beg for _water, water, water_. Even if they had just drunk a pitcher of it. Even if they refused food and medicine, they just kept asking for water.

That had been how Róng had injured herself in the first place. She had been struck by a sudden dizziness, she had tried to reach the fountain, to rest and drink and wait for the sensation to pass – but she had fallen and her bones had snapped like dry wood. She had whispered this to Mal late at night, just a hint of fear in her voice as she wished that her parents were there, that they could comfort her and tell her that they weren’t disappointed, that they would figure out what was going on and fix it –

Mal felt a little bad for picking up so many of her thoughts. She tried very hard not to listen in, but everyone’s emotions rose and fell around her like the roar of the ocean.

The water began to bubble, its surface shifting and roiling. Mal watched, tapping her foot, waiting for the bacteria to burn off and die. It wouldn’t have been so hard, so excruciatingly tedious, if she had the others with her. They had done this on the Isle too – to make the water safe to drink, or to extract salt from the seawater. It had been one of the best times for them to sit and be quiet, to work on their own separate projects, alone but together as they waited for the water to finish.  

_They’ll be back soon_ , Mal reminded herself. They had been gone for two days now, just starting on three, and so they would definitely be back soon. They would be back soon and Evie would want to know exactly what was going on in the infirmary. They would be back soon, and Mal had better be damn ready with new notes and theories and plans for what to do next.

 

Aziz was coughing so hard that he nearly choked on a clot of blood in his throat, and at that point, Mal couldn’t take it anymore.

She brewed mint and thyme together and then strained out the leaves, just as she’d seen Evie do before, and stirred in a whole ladle-full of honey until the drink was thick and sweet. She marched down the infirmary’s hall and thrust the mug at him. “Drink.”

He stared at her, his dark eyes suspicious, a strange pallor underlying the olive tones of his skin. He looked so similar to Jay that it made her heart ache a bit. “Why?”

“It’ll help.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll unhinge my jaw and swallow you like a snake,” Mal snapped back, turning away before he could respond – running right into one of the nurses.

“That’s not part of the treatment,” she sounded nervous but determined, something that Mal could almost respect. Almost.

“No, it’s not. But it’s not going to hurt either,” Mal said, trying to keep the impatience from her voice. “And it probably tastes better than whatever else you’re giving him – what’s even in that? Frankincense? Opium?”

“I’m getting Doctor Moreau –”

“Fine, go get him. I’m sure he hasn’t got more important things to worry about, what with the plague that he’s trying to stop and quarantine he’s arranging and the young heirs that he’s trying not to kill –” Mal cut herself off short when she saw that the nurse was near tears. The shifts were long, everyone was anxious and exhausted, and none of them wanted to make enemies out of kings and queens.

She let out a long sigh. “Look, it’s not magic. It’s not a potion. It’s just a bunch of boiled herbs and honey, and I’ve seen it help people before. Do you want me to drink some and prove it to you?”

There was a pleasant chiming sound somewhere behind Mal’s head, as though someone was ringing silver bells just beside her ears. She held up a hand towards the nurse. “Actually, hold that thought.”

She turned to the infirmary’s entrance, the grand doors at the end of the hall – and just as she turned, Jane’s anxious face appeared in the doorway. She clung to the doorway, so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “Mal, could you come here please?” Her voice was strained, as though she was trying not to be swept away by a strong wind.

Mal was already pulling off her apron before Jane could finish her sentence, walking down the hall as fast as she could without showing off her renewed panic. She slammed the infirmary doors behind her, trying to get Jane out of sight as fast as possible.

Fortunately, the area outside the infirmary was empty and they didn’t have to find a more secluded place. Jane was trembling, as though her whole body was trying to shake itself apart – and in a way it was. Her magic was trying to move her from one place to another, in the most direct way possible; for anyone else, that would have been a straight line, but Jane could simply disappear and reappear wherever she needed to go.

“It’s Carlos – something’s wrong –“ she gasped, her eyes glowing the bright white-blue of a lightning strike as she tried to resist the pull of her magic. Her fairy-godmothering magic that told her that Carlos was in terrible, terrible distress.

“Go, bring them all back if you can,” Mal said, but Jane had already vanished. Mal’s words hung in the empty air, circling like smoke in the space where Jane had stood. And all Mal could do was wait.

 

Mal had just enough time to get back to their room – just enough time to work herself into an irritated frenzy – when the others reappeared. Jane stood in-between the boys, holding their hands tight in her own. Carlos was pale as milk, his freckles standing out in sharp relief against his bloodless skin. She could feel his heart beating rabbit-fast, could hear the pounding of his blood all the way across the room. And Jay…there was a dead look behind his eyes, as though he was searching and searching but never seeing. Jay looked as though someone had cut out his heart.

“Where’s –” Mal started to ask, and then stopped herself short. That was a stupid question. She didn’t have time for stupid questions, not when the answer was so obvious.

“Tell me everything,” she said instead, turning it into an order.

Carlos was the one to speak first. He steeled himself faster than Mal had expected – but then, he had always been so much stronger than he looked. “We found the cabin, but there was no witch or anything of use. We stayed the night so we wouldn’t have to travel. Evie was keeping third watch, but she didn’t wake us up in the morning. All her things were still there. When we went to look for her, we couldn’t find her anywhere in the cabin, or the woods. We spent the entire day searching, but we needed to get back before the quarantine got officially set, so –”

“So we lost her,” Jay finally said, his voice so hoarse that Mal could barely hear him.

His words seemed to shatter whatever control Carlos had over himself; he bolted towards the window and clambered down the wall, heading for the woods before anyone could even take a step.

Jay sent Mal a desperate look and she nodded. He and Carlos were stronger together; forcing Jay to stay put would only create more stress. “Go. I’ll talk things through with Jane.”

Jay went out the window in a flash, following Carlos’s trail like an expert tracker. Mal moved to the window and watched him go, until he was nothing more than a shadow slipping into the tree line.

Their frantic worry had filled the air like smoke, and now that the air was clear Mal felt strangely numb. She couldn’t quite believe what was happening; it must have been some awful misunderstanding. Carlos had disappeared from them, had been trapped down in the wellspring and he had emerged only hours later. Surely Evie would do the same thing, wouldn’t she? How could someone hurt Evie, or steal her away – and what force on Earth would stop Evie from returning to her friends? She was clever and competent and the kindest of all of them, always calm and controlled – all the things that Mal had never managed to be, but it hadn’t mattered because Evie had been _right there –_

“Mal?” Jane put a hand on her shoulder, her touch lighter than a sunbeam on skin. “Are you okay?”

Mal took a deep breath, took all the emotions she was feeling and let them spread out beneath her skin, filling her until she was nothing but anger and fear and grief. They were not good emotions, necessarily, but they were _hers_ and she needed to feel them. They were the fuel that propelled her forward and kept her fighting. And right now, her friends needed her to fight.

“No,” she said. “I’m not. But that’s alright. Tell me everything you saw out there.”

 

xxxxiv

The witch – Ffion – peeled the apples with quick flicks of her paring knife, every movement practiced and efficient. She had no need to keep her eyes on her work, and so her gaze rested absently on Evie.

Evie tried not to flinch under the attention, but the too-sweet scent of apples was filling the air, leaving her distracted and nauseous.

“So,” Ffion said, her voice breaking the heavy silence. “So. Why exactly were you looking for my home? And don’t try lying to me, child, I always know when someone is lying to me.”

Evie took a deep breath, trying to order her thoughts, trying to decide what could be interpreted as truth – you could look at the truth from any angle, just as people looked at her, and they all saw something different. But she needed this woman’s help, so it was probably best to put everything on the table – no matter how stressed it made her feel. “A plague is passing through Auradon and we’re becoming desperate for a cure. When we found your grimoire, we thought that a witch might be able to help. As I said, we came looking for you – all that I said before was true, except that I have friends who will be looking for me.”

Ffion set down her knife with a sigh, giving her a looking the bordered on pitying. “Can you tell me what year it is?”

“The twentieth year of the High King’s reign.”

Evie watched Ffion mouth the words ‘twenty years’ to herself, some strange sorrow passing over her face. It took a minute before she could speak again, before she could even look in Evie’s general direction. “I see. I’m afraid I made a mistake, a larger one than I had anticipated, and I’m sorry that you’ve been caught up in it.”

Evie felt her stomach twist; she braced her hands on the table, ready to shove her chair back and bolt. All these apologies, all these vague statements, they were making her feel so sick. What on Earth did this woman want? “What do you mean?”

“It’s a bit of a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

Ffion let out a laugh, the sound short and bitter. “More than you know, child. What’s been twenty years for you has been sixty years for me.”

Evie reached down her knife again, holding it so hard she could feel the grain of the wood imprinting on her skin. They had made a mistake, seeking her out. This woman was mad.

“Let me start from the beginning. I was young, and ambitious, and my mother sent me off to explore and to grow into my powers. I traveled from my world to this one, where the magic was rich and wild, and I made my home here. After a few years, however, my eyesight began to fail and strange men came to my door, questioning me about the land and my magic. I couldn’t see them well enough to judge their intentions, and I grew panicked.”

Evie nodded along, recognizing the same story from the grimoire. Ffion stood and moved to the counter that overlooked the garden, turning her back to Evie as she set her apples on a cutting board. _Thunk, thunk, thunk_ went her knife against the wood.

“I set up a spell that would still time within my cabin.”

_Thunk, thunk, thunk._

“It was meant to give me time to cure my eyesight,”

_Thunk, thunk, thunk._

“But something went wrong.”

_Thunk, thunk – crack!_

Evie flinched; Ffion had brought the knife down so hard it nearly split the wooden cutting board. She paused, hunched over the cutting board, gathering herself.

“For the longest time I thought that I had simply hidden my cabin away from the world, and while no one could find me, I could not find any way to leave. And as my eyesight left me, it became too dangerous to explore or attempt anymore spellwork.”

She scrapped the apples into a pot, the knife clattering as she set it back on the counter. Evie’s breath hitched, the tension drawing her muscles tight as bowstrings.

“From what you’ve told me, it turns out that I have removed my home from the world altogether. One version of it has stayed in your world, while this one has split off into its own small realm. Time has passed roughly three times as fast for me than it has for you; I have been alone in this place for sixty years, and I have no idea how you came to arrive here.”

“Like a pocket,” Evie said. Her voice rang in her ears, sounding strange and dream-like.

“I’m sorry?”

This world, it’s like a pocket in a dress. Cut from the same cloth, linked to each other but still separate.”

“Ah. So it is.” Ffion looked towards Evie again, her head tilted as though she was reconsidering her. “A pocket world, then. It’s a fine name.”

“But you don’t know how to leave?”

“I’m afraid not, child. And I’m sorry that you’ve searched for this place, only to be trapped here with me.”

Evie shook her head, forgetting that the woman wouldn’t be able to see it. She dropped her knife – there was no more point to holding it – and wrapped her arms around herself. She dug her fingernails into her arms, her skin stinging where she scratched herself. “No. No, I need to get back to my friends, you can’t keep me here –”

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing –”

“No, I can’t do this –”

“Evelyn, calm yourself –”

Evie stood up and crossed the room in three strides, throwing herself at the witch’s feet. “Then teach me your witchcraft; they all say I’m a witch anyway, I’ll be your eyes, please, I can’t stay here!”

Ffion stared down at her for a long moment, the silence stretching on and on and on. Evie’s hands shook as she gripped the edge of Ffion’s skirt. The world started to blur around her, although she couldn’t tell if it was from exhaustion or from the tears forming in her eyes. Her stomach growled, the sound echoing through the cabin.

Ffion sighed, twitching her skirt away from Evie’s grasping hands. A cold terror seized Evie’s blood, until Ffion finally spoke. “Get up. First lesson, a witch does not beg.”

Evie got to her feet, shivering as Ffion held out an apple. “Eat. There’s not too much variety, but I’ve got the garden and the trees always give plenty of apples.”

Evie reached out, taking the apple, feeling its crisp, smooth skin roll against her palms. Taking a breath, crossing a line; before she could stop herself, she lifted the apple to her mouth and bit down hard.

 

xxxxv.

Mal moved down the infirmary hall, her arms filled with blood-stained bedsheets, when a hand reached out and caught her arm. She could have shaken it off with ease – the grip was no stronger than that of a thorn catching on cloth – but instead she stopped and looked down at Aziz.

She looked down her nose at him, raising an eyebrow. She tried to focus on his eyes, not on his cracked lips or sweat-stained brow or his heaving chest. She tried to push down on the guilt and protectiveness that welled up in her chest; she had enough to focus on right now, she couldn’t hold herself responsible for another person. Not when she was failing the ones that she already had. “Yes?”

“Thanks,” he said, his voice nothing but a sandpaper rasp. “For the tea. It helped.”

“Of course it did,” Mal said, putting a confidence she didn’t feel into her voice. “Do you want to tell me anything else I already know?”

Aziz frowned, trying to tighten his grip on her arm. He’d gotten thinner over the last few weeks; she could see all the bones jutting from his hands, brittle and skeleton-like. “Can you make sure that the others get some too?”

                      

Mal glanced up and down the rows of beds. They were all full, and crammed in close to each other now. If any more students fell ill, they would need to find another place to look after them. There were a few students that had escaped the disease so far, but it seemed to be spreading faster and faster through the student body.

It wasn’t only the children of royalty and nobility who attended the school; some of them were ordinary children from many different worlds, the ones who had caught passing glimpses of magic in their life, who had been on the peripheral of extraordinary events. The ones who were not believed, or told to stop being so silly, or were sent to madhouses for their trouble. The ones who had hoped and wished and prayed for a place where they could be themselves – and Auradon had answered them. It had sent them a door and an escape, only to land them in a world that was quickly becoming diseased and dangerous.

They all looked so young, staring to the ceiling, counting the seconds and feeling strength slip away with every heartbeat. In truth, most of them were her about her age, but she felt so much older. She was filled with rage and heartbreak; she was a missing childhood; she was exhaustion incarnate; she was bleeding knuckles and dirty hands. But she was still standing. And if she was still standing, then she had to work.

She sighed, shifting the laundry in her arms. She caught Aziz’s hand, breaking his hold gently, but also holding his hand for a second longer than she needed to – it was a gesture that would have been noticed on the Isle. “I’ll take care of it.”

 

_I’ll take care of it, I’ll take care of it, I’ll take care of it_ – the words became a mantra, the only thing that kept her slogging from one day to the next.

She threw herself into the work, mixing teas and poultices and balms by day, pouring through Evie’s notebooks by night. She tried not to feel like she was betraying her friend – this was Evie’s element – but the work needed to be done and Evie would understand that better than anyone.

Still, part of Mal worried that it was the care and kindness that Evie put into her work that did the trick; that her own stubbornness and defiance wouldn’t have the same effect.

But she did her best.

And for a moment, it seemed like her best might be good enough. She couldn’t offer a cure, but she could offer relief. The patients stopped looking at her with fear in their eyes; she no longer had to snap and snarl at them until they took their medicine. Moreau still glared at her, still refused to sanction anything remotely linked to magic, but he turned a blind eye when she stole the kitchen kettle and boiled enormous pots of tea.

The days blurred into one another. She and Jane researched magic as deeply as they could – Jane smuggled old books from her mother’s personal library; tiny books filled dry theory and academic jargon. Carlos paced the edges of the school, Dude at his heels, searching for gaps in the quarantine guard. Waiting to catch a glimpse of Evie’s dark hair through the trees.

Jay ran himself ragged trying to keep an eye on all of them: pulling Carlos into the shade when the sun was at its peak, dragging Mal away from her books when she needed a rest; going over the details of their journey again and again, trying to find some clue for what happened to Evie.

They were a mess, but they were making it work. It was almost like being back on the Isle.

And then, as ever, it got worse.

 

Fairy Godmother summoned Mal into her office and asked if she had seen Evie lately. She asked this very gently, as though she was talking to a skittish animal.

She was not happy with the answer that she received.

 

The word spread quickly: that Evie, the daughter of the Evil Queen Grimhilde, was missing. That she had escaped the quarantine before they could trap her in. That she left a plague in her wake – through poison and trickery, just like her mother – and that death followed in her footsteps.

Whatever tepid welcome the Isle children had received turned colder than ice. Perhaps people had been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt when they had behaved themselves, but seized on Evie’s flight as a sure sign of guilt. After all, if she was innocent, why didn’t she stay and face them? Why didn’t she offer herself up, sacrifice herself bit by bit, until they could trust her?

Mal watched as Carlos retreated further into himself, so grim and determined. He fiddled with the seeing stones constantly; his hands blurred as he disassembled and rebuilt devices, mixing mechanics and bits of magic, trying to find something that would track down Evie. Jay would sit up in the middle of the night, eyes wide, not able to sleep until he confirmed that they were all safe; he did this over and over, compulsive, until he spent more time awake than asleep. They all stayed in Mal’s room now, curled up in the same bed. Even after a week, Evie’s pillows still carried the sweet scent of her perfume; if Mal closed her eyes, she could pretend that Evie was there with her.

 

The infirmary’s backroom was filled with steam and condensation. Strips of linen, boiled clean, hung from racks spread throughout the room; Mal sat at the table, rolling the dry strips into neat bundles. Sweat dripped down her forehead, stray hairs clung to her damp neck and tickled her skin.

She would rest after she was done with these bandages. _She would take care of it._

The repetitive motion of the exercise, combined with the muggy heat of the room and her own exhaustion, nearly sent her to sleep.

_She would take care of it._ _Because who the else was going to?_

In spite of her fatigue, there was still enough vigilance ingrained in her that she heard the guard approaching behind her. She did not let herself flinch when he spoke.

“The king requires your presence.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I hope that the new year is treating you all well!
> 
> I've finally gotten around to typing of the list of names if anyone is interested in knowing why I chose names for some of the minor characters:
> 
> Elisabeta de Chateaupers - Elisabeta is a Romanian form of Elizabeth, which means 'my God is an oath', which seemed appropriate for the daughter of Esmeralda and Phoebus. Her surnames comes from the original Hunchback of Notre Dame.
> 
> Moira of Clan Dunbroch - While her name is an Scottish variant of 'Mary' it also serves as a Greek word for fate or destiny. Incidentally, while the original meaning of 'Mary' is not truly known, some theorize that it may mean 'rebelliousness'.
> 
> Alethea Kingsley - Derived from a Greek word, meaning 'truth', which seemed to be what Alice was searching for most in Wonderland. Her surname comes form the 2010 Disney film.
> 
> Li Róng - A Chinese name that can be used for both men and women, with meanings such as 'glory, honor, flourish, prosper'
> 
> Fairy Godmother - I gave her the first name Metrodora, a Greek name derived from the words for 'mother' and 'gift'. It seemed fitting!
> 
> Evie - Evie's full name - Evelyn - comes from a modern form of the name Avila, whose original meaning is unknown but has it roots from the Germanic element 'avi' which may have meant 'desired'.
> 
> I find most of my names from behindthename.com, which is an extremely helpful website!
> 
> As always, thank you so much for your comments and kudos! It's so wonderful to hear from you all, and it's very encouraging to know that you're enjoying the story. I'm always happy to talk about the story, so if you have any other questions, please let me know!


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! 
> 
> Just wanted to give you a head's up, there's some discussion of spousal abuse and assisted suicide in this chapter. It's only a brief mention pertaining to life on the Isle, but if you want to skip it, you should probably stop at the sentence "His wife must be a brave woman to put up with him" and scroll until the next break in the chapter. 
> 
> I hope that's descriptive enough to help you navigate the story, but if it needs to be adjusted in any way, please let me know.

xxxxvi.

“Well, he can wait,” Mal said, rolling and rolling the bandages between her fingers, finishing off the bundle with a small silver clip to keep it from unraveling. Then she grabbed another strip of linen and started again. “I’ve got work to do.”

“I’m – I’m sorry?” The guard’s voice sounded faint and mildly alarmed, cracking in the middle of his words.

“Oh, sorry,” Mal levered herself up and turned to face him. She moved her hands in time with her words, using the silent language Carlos had been teaching them all. “I said, he can wait.”

“No, I heard you, but –” And the guard made a helpless gesture, accidentally knocking one hand against his sword’s sheath, making it clatter against the metallic trimmings of his uniform. “It’s the king.”

“So?”

“And he requires you.”

“And he could have sent notice in advance like someone respectable, instead of expecting me to show up on his whims.” Mal waved to the table behind her, and to the blinding white of the linen that crowded the space, still waiting to be rolled up. “I’m a little busy right now.”

“But –”   

Mal sighed: the guard was wringing his hands now. He was tall and skinny, with knobbly hands and gangly limbs that spoke to a recent growth spurt. His helmet wasn’t tightened right; it slid down over his eyes and had to be corrected with a bobble of his head. Just a young man, fortunate enough not to be sick, who had been drafted into the quarantine efforts. He had no royal blood, was from some scrap of a nearby town. They had probably spoken to him about duty his kingdom, or about the prestige of serving, or of the money that would be provided to him – provided that the illness didn’t kill him first.

“Um, my lady?”

Mal sat back down at the table, kicking out another chair for him. “Come on, if you help me with this than we’ll get it done faster.”

 

Half an hour later, they were standing before the entrance of the receiving hall. Mal’s hair had escaped its braid long ago, and it was hanging around her face in lank waves. Her dress was sticking to her skin, damp with sweat; her leather apron was stained with…she wasn’t even sure what it was stained with at this point, but it was definitely something. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep - but instead she was going to speak with the king.

Perfect. Just perfect.

Charles – the young guard had offered his name, almost shyly, two seconds into their bandage rolling – gave her a small sideways glance. “Are you sure you don’t want to…um, clean up?”

Mal forced a smirk onto her face, blinking hard to clear the weariness from her eyes. “And waste any more of the king’s precious time?”

She surged forward and shoved the grand doors open, throwing herself into motion and hoping that she could keep going through sheer momentum.

The doors slammed against the walls with a _bang_ and she marched into the room. From behind her, she heard Charles scramble to catch up, calling out a belated announcement: “Your Grace, Mal – er, Lady – um, Miss Mal –”

His stuttered greeting faded as they came in sight of the High King. Mal felt her breath catch in her throat, a sudden suffocating weight pressing down on her chest – fear and anger clouded the room, so heavy that she could practically taste it. The King wore a thick dark suit, the material so tightly woven that it appeared seamless. It covered every inch of his available skin. There were a small group of courtiers and advisors clustered around him, all dressed in similar suits – they looked like a flock of crows, all dressed in black. Their clothes would probably be burned when they left the quarantine, in order to prevent the spread of infection. 

But what really caught Mal’s attention was their masks.

The masks were crafted from black leather, with glinting panes of glass to allow sight. They lacked holes for noses, giving them an oddly flat, snake-like expanse through the middle of the face – which lead to the snarling jaws of a beast that one could breathe through. Mal had heard fond tales from her mother about terrible plagues and foul diseases, and how people had used to stuff masks full of herbs to prevent themselves from breathing poison air. This was probably a similar concept, but –

But there was something about the sneers and grimaces that had been frozen into the leather, and the blank gazes from the glass eye sockets. It seemed so uncanny and wrong, as though the King had returned to being a beast once again, taking his court with him. She couldn’t make out his expression, but she could see the coiled tension in his posture, the way his fists were clenched at his side – it put her instantly on her guard. Adrenaline burned away the last of her exhaustion, searing through her veins like a lightning strike.

They had spoken before, her and the king. It had not ended well. They were both creatures of suspicion and sharp words, protective of their own and wary of outsiders. She expected the worst of him and he feared the worst from her – if they had been alone in the hall, they would probably have been at each other’s throats. But there were others around now, witnesses. The whole thing would have to be handled delicately.

She stopped before the court, sweeping down into the deepest curtsy she could manage – Evie had always made it look graceful, somehow. “You requested me, your majesty?”

“I requested you an hour ago.” It was so strange to hear his voice echo through the room without seeing any movement from his lips. It gave him an omnipotent quality – or perhaps that quality came from the lethal power that suffused his every movement. He had been a king among beasts before he had been a king among men, after all.

Mal straightened and tossed her hair back, refusing to be cowed. She had handled worse than a beast before, she reminded herself. “That’s my fault, I’m afraid. I had work to finish in the infirmary and I insisted on having Charles wait for me.” There, that might prevent the boy from getting into any trouble – she had covered for her friends and her allies before, it wouldn’t hurt to give him some extra protection against the king’s wrath.

There was a murmuring from the courtiers, but the King silenced them with a raised hand. “I suggest you make a better effort the next time you are summoned, but there are more important matters at hand.”

Mal stared into the mask’s vacant eye sockets, trying to reconcile their emptiness with the waves of fear she could feel streaming from the king. She said nothing, not wanting to give away the tenuous control she held over her own emotions.

“The queen has fallen ill.”

Mal took in a quick breath – her first thought was _Ben_ and his love for his mother and the pain he suffered when she suffered, the part of him that would die if she died.

Her second thought was: _what are they playing at here?_

“She is to be brought here under quarantine and cared for by the royal physicians,” the King continued. “Having reviewed your work with Sir Moreau and under the advisement of my son, I have decided it would be best if you attended to her as well.”

“I thank you for that honor, your majesty,” Mal said, trying to gather her thoughts, trying to calculate the angles and measure out the motivations. “But Sir Moreau has many other fine assistants. What can I offer that they do not?”

The light flashed against the King’s glass eyes. “You offer a familiar face to my wife. You offer knowledge of illnesses that the physicians do not. You offer a chance to improve the – shall we say, reputation? The reputation that you and your accomplices have among the public.”

Ah. There it was.

He was being clever – far more subtle than she had expected, which was her own damn fault for underestimating him. Be gracious, offer the villain girl a place at the queen’s side, give her a chance to prove herself; keep her there to scapegoat if the queen should die; assume that she is sneaky enough to see your ploy, assume that she knows what will happen to her if the queen comes to harm, assume that she will use her magic to keep the queen alive, no matter what the cost, assume that she will do it to keep her friends from harm.

Checkmate.

Mal sank into another curtsy, ducking her head so that they wouldn’t see her lips twist into a frown. “Then I will do as your majesty commands.”

 

xxxxvii.

Evie lay on the old and creaking sofa, staring up to the ceiling, turning the facts of things over in her mind. Her body ached and cried for rest, but her brain was humming too loudly to let her get any sleep.

Her thoughts were in fragments and half-finished sentences, her focus jumping from one thing to another and never letting her settle down. _I can’t do this on my own_ turned into _What will she do if I upset her_ turned into _Maybe I could_ – _No, I couldn’t – What if she_ – _How does this place – Carlos would – If Mal was – Why can’t I sleep – what would Mother say – Jay Mal Carlos – you know what Mother would say – please be quiet, please be quiet, please just stop –_

Evie rolled onto her side, staring down at the puddles of moonlight dappled across the floor. The shadows were ever-shifting, wavering as the trees’ branches swayed in the night air. Two weeks had already passed and she was no closer to getting home then she had been at the start. There was a heaviness in her stomach from all the food that she had forced down; bile always began to rise in her throat if she focused too hard on the sensation. She felt sick and miserable and tired. All she wanted to do was cry, but she was afraid that Ffion would hear.

The woman was strange. Ffion was not cruel. She was not exactly kind – Evie did not have enough experience with kind adults to speak with any certainty on the subject – but she was not cruel yet either. But she was a witch, and she was a powerful one if she had planned to still time – even when her plans had gone awry, she had managed to create a very small universe for herself. There was no telling what she could do to Evie and Evie had no idea how to protect herself.

Evie tried to take up as little space as possible; she tried to shrink in on herself, to be quieter, to be politer, to be quicker to complete her tasks. It only seemed to make Ffion frown, her eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement every time that Evie apologized for herself, every time she left food on her plate. She couldn’t tell what this woman wanted from her. She had tried shifting her personality slightly each day – silent as a mouse one day, then gay and singing on the next – always watching to see how the witch would react.

She didn’t react at all. No matter what Evie did, Ffion was still sharp and strange, not kind but not cruel either.

But everyone had their limits; this was something Evie knew intimately well. One day she would make a mistake – not today, perhaps not even tomorrow, but someday – and then she would really be in trouble.

Evie thought, _I’ll just have to do better_ before her exhausted mind finally dropped into sleep.

 

She woke the next morning with Ffion standing over her, one hand outstretched to shake her awake.

Evie swallowed down a scream and ducked under Ffion’s hand, rising up off the sofa. She had work to do.

There was always work to be done: so it was on the Isle, so it was here. That was almost comforting, but on the Isle she had created her own routines and practices, she had known what was right and what was acceptable. Now she was in someone else’s domain, and her hands trembled for fear of making a mistake.

Especially since most of her chores revolved around food.

Nothing went to waste in Ffion’s cabin: there was food to cook for the day, and if wasn’t to be eaten then it was to be canned for the coming winter months, and if it wasn’t to be canned then it was to be boiled for vegetable stock, and if wasn’t to be boiled then it was to be chopped up fine and added to the compost in the garden.

So Evie sliced carrots into neat even rounds; she chopped the potatoes and set half aside for soup and the other half for roasting over the fire. She mixed together the spices and set the herbs to dry out in the sun; she set the soup over the fire to simmer through the day.

The thought of so much food, which she would need to consume at the end of the day, set her stomach turning. Even when she prepared it by her own hands, there was always the chance that Ffion could add some strange potion or poison to the soup. Her mother had pulled that trick once or twice or a dozen times; eventually, Evie had learned to vomit back any food that sat uneasily in her stomach. Eventually, her body had learned to do it automatically.

 

She did the things that Ffion could no longer do. She hunted through the birds’ nests in the woods, taking a few eggs when there were some to spare. She kept her mind busy, trying to calculate how many the birds would need to support a healthy population and how many eggs she could snatch before it would be compromised.

She set snares for the rabbits by the pale dawn light, wondering if Ffion had intended to slow time for them as well, or if they had gotten swept up in the magic by accident – and how did you even calculate for such things, all the life that swarmed in the forest?

She carefully extracted honey from the care of mellow bees, and wondered if a lack of predators and competition had given new generations a calmer disposition than their forebears.  

 

Ffion had a few goats on her property; they spent most days wandering through the forest in search of their own meals, but they returned every morning to be milked. There was a cupboard for aging cheese and a churn for making butter, and the goats provided enough milk for both activities. The animals were ornery old things, used to getting their own way. They would rear back and prance on their hind legs, tossing back their horned heads. It always took a few minutes to wrangle them - Evie had learned that she needed to calm herself before she could calm them and lead them into the milking stall.

She soothed their rough hides as she worked, wondering how Ffion had stopped them from going feral, how many had been needed to prevent inbreeding, did their varied diet have any effect on the taste of their milk, would being transported by such powerful magic affect them in any way?

She hefted the yoke over her shoulders, staggering slightly under the weight of the buckets. She tottered into the kitchen, feeling almost pleased with herself, when Ffion looked up at her from the table.

“Be careful how you put the spices away,” she said. “I nearly added salt to my tea this morning.”

“Oh,” Evie said; her positive feelings vanished and the fear that always lay under her emotions came roaring up, threatening to swallow her whole. “I’m so sorry, I’ll –”

Ffion waved a hand through the air, cutting off her words. It was an imperious motion, like that of a queen – Evie felt her stomach seize, her heart leap into frantic life. For a moment she could only see her mother, outlined in searing light reflected from a thousand mirror shards. Her image multiplied a thousand times over, omnipresent, all-seeing, all-knowing. The vison was so strong that it left Evie dizzy; she could barely hear Ffion when she spoke again. “It’s no matter, just pay attention next time. Come here, I’ll show you how to make _teisen fala_.”

Evie set the milk down in the ice chest, trying to brush away the tears that welled up in her eyes. There was no reason to be this upset, she told herself. It was only one little mistake, she told herself. You really need to stop being so childish, she told herself.

Everything will be fine, she told herself, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it.

 

Her hands were no longer white as snow: they were red and chapped from the washing, grey with dirt and dust from the cleaning, dark where her skin had split open and healed over and split open again.

Evie folded her hands into fists so that she wouldn’t have to see her imperfections. The torn tissue throbbed with the movement, in time with her heartbeat. She could only imagine her mother’s face – the cruel curl of her lip, her narrowed eyes, her poisonous glare – if she could see her daughter with the hands of a washerwoman.

Still, there was work to be done. The work did not stop, no matter how tired you were or how sick you were feeling or how much self-loathing crawled in your veins. So Evie wrapped her hands around the axe handle and swung it down onto the log that was on the chopping block. The axe shifted in her grip, the friction scorching against the new blisters on her palms. It barely made a chip in the log.

Evie wrapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming in frustration. She dropped the axe; it missed her knees by sheer chance as it clattered to the ground. One of her calluses had split open again; she could taste blood, hot and metallic, against her lips.

The others had always tried to spare her this rough work. Life on the Isle was hard and dirty, but they had managed to protect her from the worst of it. She had felt guilty at that – and relieved, and guilty at her relief – but they had done it with love and without resentment. They knew what would happen if she came home with marred skin.

She had never had the chance to build up muscles like Jay, or split her knuckles open from fighting like Mal. If they were here, all four of them, they would have decimated the wood pile in minutes – Carlos could probably even rig something to do the work for them, if he put his mind to it.

But they weren’t here. All she had was herself – and someone had to do the work.

Evie picked up the axe, readjusted her grip. She raised it high, with aching shoulders and bleeding hands, and brought the axe down again and again and again.

 

The work was hard, but the quiet times were almost worse. Then it was only her and Ffion sitting in front of the fire – Evie with a book in her lap, Ffion with her eyes shut and her breathing steady, for all appearances asleep.

But Evie couldn’t concentrate with her in the room. It was like living with a pet wolf: it might appear friendly and familiar, but it was still a wild beast and it was still capable of attacking you. Better not turn your back on it, better keep your guard up; there are wolves and huntsmen who will eat little girls whole. 

So even though the books were fascinating and they held so many secrets about magic, Evie had to scan each page many times over before all the details could settle in her head. Her eyes kept flicking back and forth between the words and Ffion, the words and Ffion, the words and Ffion. She tried to pay attention to both at once and ended up paying attention to neither.

“You haven’t turned that page in a while.” Ffion asked, not opening her eyes or moving a muscle; Evie flinched at the sudden sound. “Do you have any questions?”

“No, I’m alright,” Evie said, even though her head had been buzzing with questions all day long. She gathered them up at night, sometimes wrote them down in lists when she couldn’t sleep, trying to investigate them on her own.

Mother had never liked her to ask questions. The ignorant were compliant, unable to dream of better things if they didn’t know that better things existed. Mother had wanted her to stay as soft and pliable as clay, until she could be molded into something perfect. And in Auradon, admitting her lack of knowledge seemed like admitting weakness; she might as well hand them the knife and show them where to cut her open.

“I’m alright,” she repeated, still trying convince herself that she was speaking the truth.

 

Dinner was the worst of all. It was the battle she fought every evening; it was the enemy she dreaded every day. She had to sit down across from Ffion, with her watchful unseeing eyes, and force down the food that was placed in front of her.

It was hearty food, meant to sustain farmers and laborers, meant to warm and strengthen when the wind howled and the storms roared down from the skies. It was simple but flavorful, recipes that were passed down from family to family, recipes that helped them survive the lean times, the famines and the droughts.

Evie could always feel it sitting in her stomach like a stone. She knew she had to eat in order to live, but sometimes living was such a heavy thing.

She had to chew her food carefully, cautiously, testing for any unusual flavors – anything that might hint at poison or some experimental ingredient. She swallowed what she could manage and pushed the rest around her plate, clattering her fork and knife against the ceramic so that Ffion would think that she had eaten. She would throw her leftovers to the goats; it endeared her to them, and at least then it wouldn’t go to waste.

They had the _teisen fala_ for desert: the fragrant cake dense and dotted with chunks of apples, topped with rich, heavy cream and drizzled with honey. It was so sweet that it made Evie’s teeth ache, and she could only manage a bite before she had to stop. She remembered the some of the happy fragments of their childhood, when Mal had managed to pry loose a bit of honeycomb away from the Isle’s vicious bees. She had split it among the four of them and they had licked honey from their dirty hands so that they wouldn’t lose a single drop. She wished for the others, so fervently that it seemed to burn her from the inside out.

There had been days when her mother would ply her with sweet cakes, too. And later she would stand over Evie as she writhed and sobbed, taking calm notes on her daughter’s condition and the different variables of her latest experiment. Cruella had introduced her to a whole new world – not the alchemy and spellcasting of old, but one filled with powders and needles and pills. Pills that made you go _fast_ and kept you awake as a live wire, pills that helped you concentrate, pills that made you see strange visions, pills that made everything make sense, pills that took away pain, pills that made you stay young, pills that made you stay _thin._ Thin, Cruella had always pointed out with glee, was an incredibly important thing in her world.

And so, out of desperation and competition and some twisted sort of friendship, Grimhilde set out to dominate this new world that had been unveiled to her. She even had a perfect little test subject, so she wouldn’t have to subject herself to any of the dangers of experimental medication. Sometimes she had even been kind to Evie afterwards, stroking her hair away from her fevered forehead, letting her daughter cling to her until she finally stopped shaking. It had left Evie so confused when she was younger – which mother was real, and which one was the cruel creation of a fever dream?

A tear rolled down Evie’s cheek – she hadn’t even realized that she had begun crying – and landed silently on her slice of cake, where the salt and sadness and sweetness all mixed together.

xxxxviii.

Mal wasn’t quite sure what she had expected from the Queen’s sick-bed, but she somehow wasn’t surprised to find it scattered with books. They were stacked up high like monuments, clustered around the bed so that there were always a dozen within easy reach. They seemed to overtake the whole room. A stranger would surely have assumed that it was a library – albeit one with an extremely causal organization system – rather than a guest suite reserved for visiting dignitaries.

The High Queen Belle was sitting up in her large four-poster bed, leafing through a thin volume in French. Her eyes were bright and sharp behind the panes of her reading glasses, her hair tied back in a practical knot. Still, she looked up at Mal, standing stiff in the doorway, and held up the book with a smile. “It seemed a good a time as any to catch up on my reading,” she said.

She tried to laugh as well, but the sound caught in her throat; she coughed until she was bent double, her greying hair brushing against the soft down comforter.

Mal rushed forward to steady her, guiding her back to rest against the pillows and passing her a clean handkerchief. Belle used it to wipe away a fleck of blood from the book’s gilded cover.

“Perhaps it would be better if you just got some rest, you majesty,” Mal said. Belle wasn’t the sickest person she had seen within the quarantine, but neither was she entirely well. She was pale, despite her maid’s best attempt to put some color in her cheeks, and she had the drawn look of one who had neither gotten enough rest nor enough food.

“Just Belle, if you please. I wasn’t always royalty and it seems silly to stand on ceremony when it’s just the two of us.”

“Hmm,” Mal said, turning away and kneeling to straighten some of the more precarious book piles. Her emotions had been on a thin tether lately, like attack dogs straining at the leash. As hard as she tried to keep them under her control, they kept slipping her grasp. It was beginning to scare her, a bit. It reminded her of the times that Maleficent had flown into a rage, her anger overwhelming everything, breaking over Mal like the ocean’s relentless waves. “As you wish, your majesty.”

Behind her, she heard Belle’s soft sigh and the rustle of pages as she set down her book. “Perhaps you could read to me, if you wouldn’t mind. I don’t know what else my husband expects you to do. It’s not as though anything else has worked yet, and they won’t listen when I tell them they can test things on me.”

Mal paused in her tidying, looking back over her shoulder at the queen. There was so much of Ben had come from her – they had the same tender brown eyes, the same quick hands, their preference to use words over weapons. She owed it to Ben, at least, to look after his mother as best as she could. She stood up and took the book from Belle. There was a chair placed next to the bed; she sat down and began reading at the start of a random paragraph.

French wasn’t her first language, but she had picked up a fair bit of it from others on the Isle, cobbled together from the different universes and time periods that had been forced together. There had been Gaston, obviously, although he didn’t have the best vocabulary; Claude Frollo cried out archaic biblical phrases with hellfire fury; smooth-talking Dr. Facilicer spoke English and Louisiana French and Creole, switching between them as easily as he could switch the ace out from a deck of cards. She stumbled over some words, sometimes got lost in the longer sentences, but she never made the same mistake more than once. She even found herself interested in the story, even though she was missing half the context. It was only when she paused to take a sip of water that she noticed Belle staring at her, a thoughtful look in her eyes.

“Is everything alright?” Mal said, trying not to tense under her arresting gaze. “Would you prefer another book?”

“What? No, no,” Belle blinked rapidly, shaking her head as though she was trying to clear away her thoughts. “It’s just – did Gaston ever have any children? I’m afraid I never had the courage to ask before, but I always wondered…”

Mal shut the book, tracing one finger over the elaborate cloverleaf patterns on the cover, each loop curving into the next in an infinite cycle. “He did. Seven strapping boys, just like he always wanted.”

“And did you know them at all? What are they like?”

Mal hummed softly under her breath for a moment, searching for the words. “I knew the oldest twins a bit – Gaston II and Gaston III. They took after their father for the most part, strong as oxen but they never really had the chance to be bright, not if they wanted to impress him. Gil – Gilbert, the third one – I knew him best. Not exactly book smart, he says that the letters float around the page and he can’t keep track of them, but you show him how to do something with his hands and he remembers it forever. Sing him a song once and he’ll whistle it back to you, note for note. The younger ones, I hardly know them - I was running in different circles by the time they came along.”

There, that was the prettiest parts of them. That was all that Belle would really want to hear. There was no need to tell her that all the children went around with bruises: black eyes and welts where Gaston had thrown them to the ground, split lips and split backs where the belt had struck them. That Gil had smuggled the younger ones from the house as quick as he could and paid Antony Tremaine a small fortune to keep them safe.

Those were private wounds. They weren’t hers to share, let alone with the woman who had allowed them to happen in the first place.

Belle settled back against the pillows with a sigh – maybe it was a sigh of relief, maybe she thought that Gaston had actually loved his children. Maybe she thought these few bare facts counted as absolution. “His wife must be quite a brave woman to put up with him.”

Mal continued tracing the cover’s designs. “His wife is dead.”

“Ah.”

“She was a prostitute, back in her world. She saw the wrong man committing a crime. He was rich and powerful and had her jailed on some false charges and then her sent off where no one would ever hear from her again.” Mal’s hand moved faster, pressing down on the gilt design like she was trying to tear through the leather. “She had a lovely singing voice. She wore forget-me-nots in her hair when she could find them. He made her have seven children and the eighth was stillborn and she begged us to let her die too, so that she could escape from him. Evie and I gave her laudanum and sat with her until she slipped away. We told him that it was the childbirth that killed her. Her name was Alaina,” Her hand was shaking now, she noticed, in a detached kind of way. “Did you think he would treat another woman any better than you, your highness?”

 

The air shimmered with heat. It dazzled the eye, painting everything just a bit too bright and a bit too sharp. It left everything wavering, like sunshine on water – except there was no water anywhere, every last drop of moisture had been sucked from the atmosphere.

Ben blinked against the sun, the heat leaving him dazed and sluggish. He spared a brief moment to wonder if he was falling ill as well, but shook it off before he could go too far down that path. He would work until he couldn’t work anymore and then he would rest; that was the price of kingship. You didn’t rest even when you found yourself taking your meals in your office or when you burned through the candles every night or when you realized that hadn’t seen your beloved in days.

He was waiting for Mal in the main courtyard, sitting on a bench made of sun-warmed stone. The heat pressed in on him from all directions; he had a sudden vision of himself roasting on a spit like a slain boar. He could hear the vague sound of chatter coming from his left and from his right: two groups that were moving towards him, but they were still too distant from him and he was feeling too hazy to make out what they were saying.

Then he blinked – once, twice, thrice – and the courtyard was in chaos. He saw it happen in a series of sun-struck flashes – his brain tore apart each frame, quick enough to analyze it for details, too slow to actually react in time. 

One.

He heard Chad’s voice forcing itself through the heavy air – “obviously Evie has something to do with all this, why else haven’t any of her friends gotten sick?” – Chad’s quick glance to Doug, the sun turning his hair to blazing gold, giving his eyes a feverish gleam – “You really should get over her. You deserve better than a witch, let alone one that’s another man’s leftovers – even if you’re only half a man.”

Two.

Doug’s lips twisting into a frown – his hands curling into fists as he reared back, throwing a punch at Chad – Chad rocking back on his heels, one hand to his cheek – and then Doug screaming, holding his fist in his other hand, sinking to his knees in pain – Doug’s fingers at odd angles, his skin suddenly so pale that it glowed in the harsh sun.

Three.

Mal, a blaze of purple as she raced by the bench – the sick _thud_ of bodies hitting earth as she bowled over Chad – the barest glint of a silver knife, a wicked shine the burned his eyes, before she held it to Chad’s throat.

The world sped up again and Ben was on his feet, putting out an arm to catch Jay and Carlos as they came bounding up, just a second behind Mal. “Everybody, stop!” he yelled, the sound breaking the solemn stillness of the air.

Jay and Carlos want still behind him, but he could feel the tension rolling off them in waves. Doug stopped shouting and dragged himself to the bench, cradling his bad hand against his chest. Chad was still as stone, staring up at Mal with naked terror in his eyes, too scared to even breathe in case he opened his own throat on her knife.

“Mal,” Ben said softly, but she didn’t seem to hear him. She was sitting on Chad’s chest, her skirts frothed out around her like ocean waves, her knees pinning his forearms to the ground. Her chest was heaving as she took in desperate breath after desperate breath, but her hand was steady and her eyes were cold and hard.

“ _How dare you_ ,” she hissed. “How dare you speak her name! How dare you assume that she belongs to any man!” Her voice was rising in pitch with every word; she buried one hand in Chad’s golden curls, yanking his head back, baring his throat in a taut line. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”

“Mal!” Ben cried, his voice turning sharp. She glanced back over her shoulder at him, her teeth bared in a grin. Her knife dipped – just for a second, just enough for a paper-thin cut to appear on Chad’s skin – and then she spun the knife in her fingers. It vanished in a quick blaze of light, stored away God only knew where.

She leaned close to Chad, forcing him to meet her eyes. “I’m not going to do anything. And it’s not because that’s what Ben wants me to do. It’s not because that’s what Auradon wants me to do. It’s because I could cut you to ribbons and Evie would still insist on stitching you back together, and I refuse to make any more work for her. So you can count this as the second time that _she_ has saved your miserable life!”

She rose to her feet in a fluid motion, turning back to the others. She looked dazed; her eyes skimmed right over Ben. “Carlos, watch him,” she nodded towards Chad, who was still lying frozen on the ground. “Jay, get Doug some help.”

The boys sprang to attention: Carlos perched himself on the arm of the bench, staring down at Chad, unblinking and still as a gargoyle. Jay sat down next to Doug, taking hold of his broken hand and holding it up to the light. Ben heard him mutter, “God, you have to keep your thumb on the _outside_ when you punch, how did you even live this long?”

In the seconds it took them to move, Mal vanished.

“You should go after her,” Carlos said. His voice was monotone; his eyes didn’t leave Chad’s face. One wrong move, his posture suggested, and he would be happy to finish what Mal had started. “She probably needs some company. Some place with a nice view.”

“In a second,” Ben knelt down next to Chad, staring into his eyes. They had been friends once – had attended the same parties, the same classes; they had shared their toys and their secrets. At his best, Chad was loyal and forthright and passionate, but somehow those traits had been twisted until Ben could hardly recognize the boy in front of him. Their shared paths had diverged somewhere, and he didn’t know if they would ever again cross in friendship.

“I know you might be thinking about going to Fairy Godmother about this,” Ben said slowly, giving each word time to sink into Chad’s dazed mind. “But also know that I heard what you said to Doug and know that she won’t let you get away with using that language. Think carefully about what you do next.” He stood up, brushed the dirt from his knees and took a step away, before stopping and looking over his shoulder. “And, Chad?”

He waited for Chad to push himself up, for his eyes to flick to Ben’s face. Ben wanted to be sure that he was listening.

“The next time you use that language, about Evie or anyone else, it’s not just Mal you’re going to have to worry about.”

 

He found Mal on the roof of the bell tower – not the alcove where the bell hung, but the actual steeply sloping roof. It took him a minute to haul himself up, hanging on to the sturdy gutters and gargoyles, scraping his hands on the rough shingles. He was panting from the effort by the time he got up; again, he tried to push away any thoughts of illness. There were more important things at hand.

Mal was sitting at the edge of the roof, her heels dug into the stone trough of the gutter to prevent herself from slipping forward. Her knees were pulled tight to her chest, her forehead resting on her knees, her shoulders shaking and half-choked sobs coming from her throat.

“Hey,” he said. He touched her shoulder first; then, when that provoked no negative reaction, he tucked a strand of hair behind her pointed ear, letting him see her face in profile. She was biting down on her wrist, her teeth sunk deep into her skin, in order to muffle her sobs.

She didn’t answer for the longest time, so Ben settled back against the roof and squinted up at the sky. The air up there was dry and heavy, the sky a piercing blue – sunset would come eventually, probably within a few hours. But he would wait until sunset and beyond, if that’s what Mal needed. For her, he would wait forever.

“I think I’m losing my mind,” she finally said, her voice little more than a croak.

Ben looked at her from the corner of his eye; she was staring at the southern horizon, where Evie had gone to disappear. He stayed silent, letting her halting words come at their own pace.

“I just – it’s like all my barriers are gone – and everything else keeps bleeding in, it’s like I’m dissolving and I’m not myself anymore –” She swiped a hand across her eyes, wiping away the tears that were cutting tracks down her cheeks. “And now Evie’s _gone_ and I can feel everyone else but I can’t feel _her!_ ”

Ben reached out and put a hand on her back; her muscles were taut with tension under the soft fabric, her whole body shaking with emotion. “It’s okay,” he said, casting desperately for the right words. “Maybe it’s just a matter of distance –”

“God, she’s my _second_ and she’s gone!” Mal bit down on her wrist again, stifling a high-pitched scream that tore from her throat. She wailed the word _second_ the same way one would say _best-friend-sister-soulmate._ It tore a new wound into Ben’s heart.

“Mal, whatever happened to Evie isn’t your fault.”

“No, I should have been there with her – do you know what happens on the Isle, if you don’t have someone to trust? You go insane, Ben. We all watched it happen to our parents. It happened to our parents and it was going to happen to us if I didn’t do something.”

She finally glanced over at him, her eyes bloodshot and wild. “I found Jay first, and he had my back in fights and I slipped him things when there wasn’t enough loot to steal – and for the first time I had someone who would help me, no matter what.” The ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. “And then there was Evie and Carlos, and when we were together things were alright. There was someone to catch you when things went wrong.”

“A second,” Ben echoed, remembering the dueling term.

“Yeah,” Mal made a sound that was half-sigh, half-hiccup. Her tears were slowing now, her body relaxing under the heavy weight of his hand. “Yeah, that’s it. Everyone else paired off, eventually, once they saw that it helped. That it didn’t make you less – less of a villain.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“No – yes – god, I really don’t know how I feel anymore.”

“Do you feel slightly less like stabbing someone?”

“I wasn’t really going to hurt him, I just wanted to scare him a little.”

“I think you succeeded.” Ben scrubbed a hand across his eyes, a terrible weariness settling into his bones as the day’s stress caught up with him. “I’m not saying don’t carry the knives, I’m just saying don’t pull them out where everyone can see. I think I’ve convinced Chad not to complain to Fairy Godmother, but I don’t know if it’ll work a second time.”

“Oh? And how’d you manage that?”

He raised an eyebrow, frowning in mock-offense. “What, you think you’re the only one who knows how to deliver a threat?”

Mal stared at him for a second, eyes wide, and then she burst into giggles. This time she doubled over with laughter, this time her tears were from delight. This time, when she wiped her eyes and turned to him, the first thing she said was “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Ben said it easily, as though his heart hadn’t started hammering in his chest, like blood wasn’t roaring in his ears, like his dreams hadn’t all just come true.

Mal hummed under her breath, pulling his arm over her shoulder and tucking herself against his side. “Can we just stay up here for a bit? We never really got to see sunsets on the Isle. Carlos said the barrier didn’t reflect light the right way.”

“Yeah, of course.”

And they stayed there until the sunset bled through the sky, painting them both with colors they had never seen before.

  

xxxxix.

People in Auradon always seemed so surprised when things broke. They only saw the snapping of a rope, not slow fraying that led to the break. They only saw the disintegration of chains, not the creeping rust that had weakened them. They seemed so used to looking away, of telling themselves _someone else will take care of it_. They only saw problems when they could no longer be ignored.

They looked at a girl and closed their eyes to all the stress and pressure and harassment and trauma that warp a person. They only saw a girl lose her mind.

In hindsight, Evie was a bit surprised that it had taken so long to happen.

 

Evie’s eyes were so tired that they burned. She kept them shut tight against the moonlight pouring in through the windows, but it did nothing to help her sleep. There was no peace in darkness: bright filaments flickered in and out of existence across her eyelids, a kaleidoscope of color that only she could see.

She was floating in her mind, her thoughts strange and hazy, as though she was hovering somewhere above her own body. Half-awake and half-asleep, aware enough to realize she wasn’t resting but without enough willpower to do anything about it. If she tried to twitch her fingers, they refused to move, held in place by some invisible force.

And then she heard the footsteps –

 

And suddenly she was a child again, on the eve of her fourteenth birthday. She had been lying in bed, her cheek pressed to the fraying, faded silk of her pillow. A threadbare blanket barely covered her from head to foot. And there was moonlight coming through the windows, turning the world silvery and silent.

And then she heard the footsteps.

She had been too excited to sleep – good things were supposed to happen to you on your birthday, all the stories said so, and there was still a part of her that was desperate to believe in stories. Jay might have some small bangle set aside for her, or a notebook that was only half-full, he was always able to find the best things. And Mal had offered to help Carlos with his chores, so that they would all be able to spend the day together, and, and…

And the footsteps came closer.

And her mother had pushed the door open. Her shadow moved ahead of her, dark as an oil slick against the moonlight. And within that shadow was the silver gleam of a knife.

Evie shut her eyes tight, forced her breathing to be slow and even, hoped that her mother hadn’t seen the whites of her eyes in the darkness.

And the footsteps stopped.

And her mother loomed over her, the knife held tight in one elegant hand. The blade had a slight curve and came to a wicked point, fresh from the whetstone. Its handle was made from ivory, inlaid with delicate ebony patterns, perfectly fitted to the Queen’s hand. It was a hunting knife, the kind you used to skin flesh and cut out hearts.    

And Evie remembered that Snow White had been fourteen years old when the mirror declared her fairest in the land.

She heard the slight rustle of fabric – her mother, tilting her head and looking down at her daughter. What was she looking for? Some flaw that would convince her to let Evie live? Something that would her convince her that her daughter wasn’t worth bothering with?

Would she feel it, when she died? Would it be a quick slit across her throat? Or something long and drawn out – a strike right to the heart, the blade eased precisely between her ribs? Would her heart keep trying to beat around the cold metal, pumping more blood from her body even as it tried to keep her alive?

She had seen death before on the Isle, in disease and starvation and half-beaten bodies. And now she was going to meet it for herself – and all she could do was hold still and pray it would be quick.

Queen Grimhilde stood there all night, her fingers curled tight around the knife.

And Evie did not sleep – she feigned the appearance of sleep, keeping herself perfect and still, afraid that any movement might startle her mother into striking. Perhaps if she played dead well enough, Death itself would pass her by, as it had passed by a fair maiden sleeping in a glass coffin.

And as the night dissolved into the sunrise, Queen Grimhilde slipped from the room, just as quietly as she had first come.

And when Evie got up in the morning, she left her make-up smudged and her braids just a bit crooked – just enough to show her mother that she wasn’t a threat, not even remotely any competition to her beauty. That she was perfect at not being perfect.

And her mother had scolded her, but there had been a pleased gleam in her eye.

And Evie had a new role to play, a new tightrope to walk. A new fear that paralyzed her every night – that she would fall asleep and never wake up again – or that she would fall asleep and wake for one last moment of pure terror, the knife’s silver silken touch against her skin, so sharp that she might not even feel it –

 

And someone was still standing over her.

And Evie was shaking, shaking so hard that she thought her bones might fly apart. She could not tell if she was actually shaking, though, or if she was just imagining it. If the movement would be enough to get her killed. If she was fourteen or seventeen or if this was a fever dream or some terrible spell, if this was happened when you died, if you just shook and shook and shook until there was nothing left of you –

 

A hand touched her shoulder.

And Evie broke.

 

She didn’t know how long she screamed, or how the blood had ended up underneath her fingernails, or why she had curled herself into the corner, a knife clenched tight in her fist.

As she came back to herself, leaving the strange dark fog that had fallen over her mind, she was scared that she had done something to Ffion. But no – there was no blood on the knife. When she dared to look up, the old woman was sitting on the couch, her blank eyes gazing into empty space. One hand was wrapped around her cane, which rested at her side like a loyal dog.

“Are you feeling better now?” she asked. She made no movement towards Evie; she didn’t even look towards her. 

Evie started to answer, but her breath caught on sore throat and she only managed a pathetic croaking sound. She took a deep breath, swallowing a few time, and managed to let out the world’s smallest “No.”

To her surprise, Ffion let out a dry laugh. “You know, I think that’s the first time you’ve ever told me the truth.”

Evie tried to loosen her grip on the knife, just to prove to herself that she could. Her fingers refused to budge, as if they’d become fused to the wooden handle. “I’ve never lied to you.”

“No. But that’s not necessarily the same as telling the truth, is it?”

Evie was silent. She took a moment to examine herself: there was an aching pain in her head now, like she had been scratched by a wildcat, which might explain where the blood had come from. There was a new tear in her borrowed nightgown, so that one sleeve was barely hanging by a thread. She felt dizzy and thirsty and so, so tired.

As her silence stretched on and on, Ffion sighed. She finally turned her head, locating Evie with unsettling accuracy, but she kept her distance otherwise. “Do you know what it means to be a witch?”

Evie pulled her knees in closer even as she muscles protested, trying to make herself as small as possible. She didn’t bother answering; it was surely another trick question, just another thing to show how stupid she was.

“Being a witch isn’t about magic or potions or moon phases or crystals – it works with those things, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about helping people, whether they accept you or not. It’s about getting up and doing the work that needs to be done, even if no one else wants to do it. Especially if no one else wants to do it. But what most witches forget is that they’re people too, and that sometimes you need to help yourself first.”

Evie looked up sharply, watching Ffion. There was no mockery in her voice, no hint of insincerity. She sat just sat there patiently, tracing her fingers up and down the handle of her cane.

“You’re scared of me.” Ffion said. “You don’t eat. You don’t sleep. You don’t ask any questions. You don’t make any unnecessary conversation. I come out here tonight and you’re very literally unable to breath. None of that is healthy for you.”

Evie conjured up the last scraps of her courage, even if she had to hold the knife tighter to do it. “That’s not any of your business.”

She waited for Ffion to rage, or strike out at her, but the witch just let out a sad sigh. “Perhaps not. But it’s yours, and you’re not doing anything to take care of yourself. Right now, you’re treading water and eventually you’re going to drown.”

Ffion gestured around the room: the small tables and chairs had been overturned, a glass lay shattered on the floor, the shards sparkling like snow between them. At Evie, with her torn dress and bloody hands and the knife she couldn’t let go of, no matter how hard she tried. And her voice was gentle when she asked, “Do you really want this happening to you forever?”

Evie swiped a hand across her eyes; tears had dried on her skin while she had panicked, but she always had a few more tears left inside her. Perhaps it was really hitting her: that a month had passed, and she was no closer to reaching her friends, that her sanity was dissolving by the day, that she might just need to make a life for herself here. That she could give up, and keep panicking, and keep dissolving, until there was nothing truly left of her – or she could do something about it.

“No,” she said, a sniffle in her voice.

“And will you let me help you with this?” Ffion held out an open hand to Evie. Even when Evie hesitated, her hand did not waver in the air; she was patient and still, like stone.

This wasn’t something she could do for the sake of her friends, because they weren’t there and might never be again. And it wasn’t something they could do for her. For once, she had to do something for herself, and only for herself.

Slowly, carefully, Evie folded the blade of the knife back into its handle, hearing a slight _click_ as it locked back into place. She set it on the ground and stood up, weaving her way through the glass shards on the floor. She stood before Ffion, defenseless, and took her hand. “Yes.”

 

l.

Of course, it couldn’t be as easy as one decision – one final declaration that she would be alright, once and for all. It was a decision that she had to keep making over and over, each second of each day.

 

Ffion sat across from the table, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea, steam rising and clouding the air in front of her. Time was rushing on in this strange little world; summer was fading fast into mild golden days and cool evenings. “Tell me what we need to do differently.”

Evie clutched her own cup of tea, shrinking back in her chair, already having second thoughts about this. “We don’t need to change anything, really, it’s fine.”

Ffion raised an eyebrow and took a pointed sip of her tea.

“I mean, it’s nothing that I’m not dealing with already.”

More silence from Ffion. Evie clutched her mug tighter, the words spilling out of her mouth. “There’s no real problem, and you don’t like change, and…”

Ffion waited until she stopped babbling before she spoke, letting Evie list of every single possible excuse she could possibly dream up. “Let’s get one thing straight: I’m an old lady, I live alone, and so obviously I’m a little set in my ways. But I can deal with change and I’m not the only person living here now. Short of reshuffling the spice rack and rearranging every bit of furniture, I doubt there anything I couldn’t handle.”

Evie hesitated for a moment longer, the mug’s heat burning into her palms. “Please don’t stand over me to wake me up,” she said quickly, trying to get the words out before she could stop herself. “If you call across the room I’ll wake up, I promise, but please don’t stand over me and touch me when I’m asleep.”

“Easy enough.” Ffion drained her tea. “Anything else?”

“The moonlight keeps me awake,” Evie said, even as a small voice inside her screamed that _she was asking for too much_ , that _she was giving too much information away_.

“I’ve got some old cloth you can use to make curtains, if you don’t mind the work.” Ffion gathered up the mugs and moved to the sink, setting them down with a clatter. “There, that’s a fine place to start.”

It was only Evie’s fragile control over herself that stopped her from blurting out “To _start_?”

 

Some things were far harder to deal with than others. The kitchen was a main source of contention; they had been in there for hours as Evie struggled to share which foods she could actually eat.

Ffion stared into the open cupboards, organized neatly so that she could find everything by habit. “Bread and butter?”

Evie hesitated and then shrugged. “It’s alright sometimes, I suppose.”

Ffion just leaned further into the cupboard. “Is that an honest answer?” she asked, the same question she’d been asking over and over throughout the last few weeks.

“Why does it matter?” Evie asked back, trying not to let a whine creep into her voice. “Food is food, I need to eat it whether I want it or not.”

That made Ffion lean back from the cupboard, a loaf of bread in her hands. “Yes, you need to eat, but there’s no point in purposefully eating things that make yourself sick just to please me, or anyone else.”

“Why do we have to talk about it, though? Can’t I just not eat it?”

“Because,” Ffion set the bread down on the counter and began to cut herself a slice. “You’ve gone a very long time without telling people what it is _you_ want, and now you need practice. If you say something’s fine people will take you at your word; there’s not a soul in the world that can read your mind, including me, so you’ve got to speak up for yourself sometimes. So.” She pushed the cutting board towards Evie, sliding the bread across the counter. “Bread and butter?”

Finally, Evie shook her head. Sometimes she could stomach bread, when it was freshly baked and pale and soft – this bread, dark with rye and hearty with grains, was none of those things. “No, thank you. Not right now.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Ffion said, a smile twisting at her lips. “More bread for me. So, tell me one more thing that bothers you and then we’re done for the day.”

Evie licked her lips, searching for the right words. Several times she started a sentence and stopped herself, stuttering and stumbling. She could feel tears building up behind her eyes, and tried to ignore the thought of _pathetic_ that slipped through her mind. Ffion waited when the words wouldn’t come right away, chewing her bread slowly and licking the butter from her fingers.

“All these big meals,” she managed at last. “It’s just – it’s too much all at once.”

“Alright,” Ffion closed her eyes, thinking it over for a moment. “Alright. So if I, say, left some bowls of berries and nuts on the counter, would you come in and eat them when you got hungry?”

“Yes, I – I think I could do that.”

Ffion nodded to herself. “Let’s try that then. We might need to find an alternative for winter when things aren’t as fresh, but we’ve got time to work that out later. Now –”

“And apples,” Evie said, trying to rush the words out before she could stop herself from sharing something secret, something she held so close to the tender part of her heart. It felt like clearing out an infected wound, an abscess that had been rotting deep within her. “I really can’t stand apples.”

Ffion smiled, despite the jars of applesauce and apple butter and dried apple rings that filled the cupboard. She smiled, despite the fact that Evie was complaining to her. She smiled – because it was the first time that Evie had volunteered information without being asked.

 

There were bad days. Evie did not like to think about those.

 

There were good days, too, as time went on. The days when she felt like she could ask question after question, without fear of punishment or judgement.

Why did the apple trees produce fruit out of season? (The answer: Ffion liked apples, and spared the fair bit of magic needed to make sure that she had a steady supply of food.)

Why were some plants magical and not others? (The answer: depending on the world, some plants absorbed more magic from the earth than others, and it amplified the properties that they already had. Most potion ingredients were not actually, not technically, magical in and of themselves – but they were extra potent.)

Why did Ffion consider Evie a witch when she had no internal source of magic, like Ffion did? (The answer: anyone, even men, could be witches if they tried hard enough. It was all in the attitude.)

And –

“Ffion, what’s this?” Evie pulled the book off the shelf so quickly that she gave herself a papercut; she stuck her finger in her mouth before she could get blood on the pages.

“I might need a bit more to go on then that,” Ffion called back. She was sitting outside, her face turned up the sun, her hands busy spinning the goat’s hair into yarn.

Evie darted outside, holding out the book and flipping through the pages even though Ffion couldn’t possibly see them. Half the pages were covered in Ffion’s spidery handwriting and the other half were covered with spirals – spirals the wound in and around each other, circles that overlapped and interlocked, surrounded by dots or small crescent shapes. “This – this book with this language, it’s all made of spirals, I’ve seen this someplace before –”

“Oh, that,” Ffion gathered up the yarn she had finished, turning to face Evie. “That’s the language of the dryads. It was one of the projects I made when I first came here, before I left and got settled into the cabin. They’re Auradon’s native people, you know. Flip to the back, there’s a drawing of the fellow who helped me put the dictionary together.”

Evie turned to the back page of the book. Her hands were shaking.

There was a simple sketch on the last page: a man with dark skin and long dark hair, and ears that came to slight points. Ffion had drawn him with a broad smile and a mischievous look in his eyes – one that struck Evie as strangely familiar.

“Cian,” Ffion sighed, a fond smile on her lips. “He was a charming fellow. I wonder if he’s still around.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this chapter - sorry it took me so long to put it together! I've started taking on some new responsibilities at work and it's all left a little tired at the end of the day, which makes writing a bit hard. Thank you so much for all the comments and kudos - you all say the sweetest things, and it's so encouraging for a writer to hear. It's dearly appreciated, and I'm always happy to answer any questions you have!
> 
> Thanks again for reading!


	5. Chapter Five

li.

“The…dryads?” Evie said slowly, testing out the word. She had heard the name Cian before – Carlos had spoken to his spirit by the wellspring – but she had never heard of the dryads.

“Of course. Their written language was originally invented to record their traditional songs, that’s why it’s a bit difficult to interpret. Look, these symbols are meant to indicate tone, cadence, volume, that sort of thing. Didn’t they teach you any of this in that school of theirs?”

“Ffion, I’ve never heard of the dryads.” Evie stared hard at the symbols, trying to imprint them in her mind, as though they might disappear at any second. “They never told us about anyone living in Auradon, prior to the founding of the inter-kingdom union.”

Ffion frowned. She looked more upset then Evie had ever seen her, her face as dark as a thundercloud, and Evie fought down the urge to back away from her. “That can’t be true. They were a nomadic society, they must have moved on to another part of the continent.”

“Did they have any sacred sites? Something they wouldn’t ever let go to ruin if they could help it?” Evie hated herself for the words that came out of her mouth, but she needed all the evidence that she could gather. The wellspring, the poisoned magic, the dryads that she’d never known existed – it all had to fit together somehow.

“Yes, the…” Ffion swallowed hard, the implications of Evie’s words hitting her. “The _Foinse,_ they called it. You’re sure you’ve never heard of them?”

Evie could only shake her head.

The wind whistled around them, bringing clouds across the sun. Evie shivered against the sudden chill, wrapping her arms around herself. Ffion stood up, shaking her head. Her hands were clenched tight around her cane, so hard that her veins stood out like blue rivers against her skin. “I need to…Excuse me, Evie, I think I need to lay down.”

Evie took a step back, giving her a wide berth to pass, trying not to see how frail Ffion suddenly looked. She would have to tell her what she know of Cian, eventually, when they’d both had time to calm their reeling minds. There couldn’t have been a whole civilization that she’d never heard of, could there? It had only been twenty years since the official start of King Adam’s reign, perhaps twenty-five years since the kingdoms had begun finding Auradon’s doorways. Surely things couldn’t have gone wrong in such a short span of time?

But in her heart, she knew better. The Isle had existed just as long as Auradon, after all. Things could go wrong in the blink of an eye, in the space between heartbeats.

Evie stepped inside, shutting the dictionary carefully and placing it back on the shelf. The clouds were growing dark, promising a sudden summer storm; she would kill herself if the book got wet and destroyed their only way to translate the language.

The wind howled that evening; thunder roared through the sky; the rain struck the windows as though it was trying to shatter them. And Ffion did not leave her room, not even to make sure that Evie ate something for dinner.

 

The next morning dawned cool and misty, the world little more than a hazy blur beyond the rain-streaked windows. When Evie stepped out to begin her chores, the grass was lush and damp underfoot, everything glowing a violent green through the wisps of fog hovering just above the ground.

Evie walked further into the forests, hunting for the snares that she had set the other day. One couldn’t live on rabbit alone, but it did make a nice addition to the stew on occasion – it would prove handy if the weather kept up like this and they couldn’t leave the house for the rain. She tried to concentrate on planning the next few days, but every time she brushed against the greenery, a cold shower of raindrops fell on her head, breaking her out of her thoughts.

And then there was Ffion – she had looked so tired last evening, after hearing the news of the dryads. Was she missing her friend? Was she shaken by how much the world had changed while she was gone? Was she coming down with some kind of illness? God, if she died…Evie felt a shudder work its way through her body, one that had nothing to do with chill air. If Ffion died, Evie wasn’t sure if she would be able to survive on her own.

She was so distracted by her careening thoughts she didn’t notice the mist growing higher – first it swirled around her ankles, then her calves and her knees, until she was wading through a pale ocean that rippled and ebbed against her skin. It was only when she looked up from checking her furthest trap that she realized that she couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of her.

Ahead of her, the mist had grown so thick that it appeared solid: a great white wall that seemed to swell and sway and seethe. It was so tall that she couldn’t see the tree tops within it, so tall that it seemed to block out the sky.

Evie paused where she was crouched, trying to untangle the sense of foreboding that the fog created in her. It almost reminded her of the mist that always hung by the shoreline, brought on by the Isle’s crashing waves – but there was no taste of salt in the air, nor was there the call of any birds or the chirping of insects. There was simply…nothing.

Evie untangled the rabbit from her snare and then unknotted the snare itself, gathering it up in her hands. She edged closer to the wall of mist, obeying whatever instinct told her not to touch it directly. She looped the snare back around the rabbit’s body and cinched it tight, so that it wouldn’t come loose.

She hefted the rabbit – its fur was soft under her hands, its dangling ears tickled at her skin – and tossed it into the mist.

The snare immediately went slack in her hands, the weight at the other end disappearing. Evie took a step back, pulling the snare with her – and then she froze.

The rabbit was gone, along with the part of the snare that had been attached to it. They had vanished the second they had entered the mist, cut off as though they’d never existed at all.

Evie whirled around and sprinted all the way back to the cottage.

 

lii.

Mal threw herself into the chair across from Doug, squinting at him through the dim lighting of the archives. She twirled a feather pen between her fingers, tracing a few complex designs into the air. “Say ‘start’.”

“Um…start?” Doug shrank back in his chair, starting to look slightly panicked as Jay and Carlos moved to flank either side of her chair. He pulled his injured hand closer to his chest. It was his right hand – the dominant one, Mal noted – and a splint had been affixed to it, keeping his thumb immobilized while the bones set. He had been making due with his left hand, but she had seen him struggling at mealtimes, or when he needed to write things down.

Mal shook her head impatiently, repeating her movements with the quill. “No, like an order. Have some confidence.”

It took a second for Doug to pull himself together, but eventually he squared his shoulders and stopped fidgeting under her gaze. “Start.”

“Good. Now say ‘stop’.”

“Stop. What is this – hey!”

Mal lunged forward and seized his injured hand before he could protest, holding it as carefully as she could – it helped that Doug froze like a frightened rabbit. It allowed her to stab the quill into his hand, deep enough to stain the quill’s tip with his blood. “There, all done.”

“What was that for?” Doug sounded truly bewildered, staring at the fresh cut on his hand. Carlos folded his arms and tapped his foot against the marble floor, not even trying to hide his impatience with the other boy.

“That,” Mal said, “was to get this attuned to you. Here, try it out.” She slid the pen across the table to him – it was a magnificent thing: a raven’s primary feather, black with a rainbow-shimmer sheen. “It’ll take notes for you.”

“Start,” Doug said slowly, his eyes going wide as the pen stood up, balancing on its point as though held by some invisible hand.

“Should mimic your handwriting pretty decently,” Mal said causally, trying not to let onto the pride roaring in her chest. She had worked so hard to craft the spell herself, concentrating for hours until she could wrangle her magic into cooperation. “It’ll copy down what you say, just tell it stop when you’re done. Might misspell some words, but nobody’s perfect.”

Jay leaned over the desk, poking at Doug’s injured hand. “And when that thing comes off, I’m teaching you how to throw a proper punch. That last one was so sad, it’s not even funny. Points for sheer nerve, though.”

Carlos scowled when Doug twisted about, staring at each one of them in turn. “Don’t look at me. I haven’t got anything for you.”

“No, I’m sorry, it’s not that – I just, why?” The pen jerked and scrawled his stuttered words across a scrap of paper.

Mal shrugged, leaning back in her chair, relaxing now that she was quite sure the spell wouldn’t go horribly wrong. “A favor for a favor. It’s good policy to pay your debts.”

Somehow, that seemed to make Doug shrink further in on himself, ducking his head and hunching over until his shoulders practically brushed his ears. “I didn’t do it for a debt,” he mumbled, watching his own words appear in front of him.

“Well, now we’re even either way.” Mal started to stand up, but Doug’s next words gave her pause.

“Why did she have to leave?” He sounded utterly miserable, as though he had actually been one of Evie’s friends. The room, already close and dark and claustrophobic, seemed to shrink down further – or maybe that was the sudden tunneling in Mal’s vision as she struggled to keep herself calm.

It was Carlos who answered, placing both his hands on the desk and leaning over it, forcing Doug to look him in the eye. “Why do you think she left?” he hissed. “You heard what Chad said. And she knew what everyone else was thinking when they looked at her, and she hated it. She left to get away from all of you.”

“But not everyone is like that! There are others, I’m nice –”

“Mmm, of course. _You’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice,_ ” Mal hummed, the tune appearing in her head unbidden. “There when it’s easy, gone when it’s not. Do you even know anything about her, or did you just make up some perfect girl in your head?”

“I didn’t –”

 “No, of course you didn’t,” Carlos cut him off, practically quivering with pent-up tension. “Do you know her favorite subject? What foods she can eat? How about the potions she can make? Her thoughts on Dwarven mining policy? She speaks Dwarfish, ever since she was a kid, did you know that? Ever asked her what the hell she wants to do with her life? What books does she like, how does she take her tea, what was she sewing that week? Tell me one single personal thing that she trusted you with and maybe then I’ll believe that you actually know her!”

“Hey.” Jay put a gentle hand on Carlos’s arm. “Let’s go make sure Dude’s okay outside. I bet he needs more water, right?”

Carlos shut his eyes and let out a deep breath, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

The two left the room without another word, not even a backwards glance at Doug.

Mal frowned down at the paper – she must have gotten some part of the spell a bit off, because the pen had taken down everyone’s words, not just Doug’s. Doug himself was staring down at the transcript, his face ashen in the low light.

Mal sighed – she didn’t quite feel sorry for him, but shouting at him would only get half their point across. She was trying to find better words to explain, but Doug spoke first.

“What about her magic mirror? Wouldn’t that know where to find her?”

Mal bit her lip, wondering how much to tell him. “We don’t want to risk it. That thing feeds off desperation and right now, we’re really desperate. It sees too much, it’s too smart for its own good. We keep it in an iron-lined box for a reason. It would probably bleed us dry before giving us an answer and then there wouldn’t be anyone left to find Evie.”

“What about a new one? One that wasn’t as smart.”

“We don’t have the right components for that right now, and no way to get them without breaking the quarantine.” Mal took a step towards the doorway, ready to end the conversation. She needed to go visit Belle, and it would take her a while to cross the campus.

Doug traced a finger over the transcript of Carlos’s rant. When he finally looked up at her, his gaze was steady. “I can help you with that.”

Mal hesitated, halfway to the door. She turned, seizing him up. “That would be illegal, procuring items for magical use.”

Doug shrugged, his eyes hard and resolute. “It doesn’t matter. If I was part of what made her leave, then I should help bring her back. If – if you think she wouldn’t mind, I mean.”

Mal gave it one more split-second of thought – felt the remorse-sadness-sincerity rolling off Doug in waves – and then sat back down in her chair. “Alright, let’s talk.”

 

liii.

Evie bounded into the cabin, moving so quickly that she slipped on the rug covering the floor, her feet flying out from under her and tipping her sideways onto the hardwood. There was a terrific crash as her body hit the ground. She banged her elbow hard as she landed, she felt a bruise begin to form on her left hip – but there was no time for pain, she was already scrambling to her feet.

She hit Ffion’s door at a break-neck pace, hammering on it with her fist until she was sure that her knuckles would break from the force. “Ffion!” she wailed. “Ffion, I need you!”

She could feel the panic already rising in her chest, the darkness beginning to cloud her vision. She could hear her breath, high and strained like some suffering from an allergy attack – god, what if she had done something wrong by coming here, what if she had somehow managed to break the world, why couldn’t she ever do anything right? What if –

The door flew open and she nearly hit Ffion in the face; she stopped herself with a second to spare and reeled backwards, trying to put some space between herself and the witch. Maybe she had somehow started off the plague in Auradon, maybe she was some kind of infection, some parasite that seemed to walk and talk and act human but would never quite be one of them, maybe that was why her mother had worked so hard to keep her in check –

“Evie, I want you to imagine a spiral. What direction is it going? Clockwise or counterclockwise?”

The voice came from very far away, the sound wavering and echoing as though she was submerged in water. Colors were popping like fireworks in front of her eyes, set against a background of infinite darkness. Some distant part of her mind recognized the words that the voice spoke and tried to obey its commands.

She let out a gasp through bloodless lips and managed to spit out the word “Clockwise.”

“Good. That’s perfect. Now take a deep breath, and focus on the spiral. Slow it down and make it spin the other direction.”

Evie did as she was ordered; she felt her eyes roll in her sockets as she traced out the spiral’s new path, the motion faintly hypnotic. She had to concentrate so hard that she forgot to panic; slowly, she felt herself return to her body, grounding herself back within her skin.

She opened her eyes and saw Ffion sitting across from her, just an arm’s length away. The witch’s hair was mussed, the bags under her eyes more pronounced than usual, but her spine was still straight and strong. It would take more than a little bad news to break her, Evie could see that now.

“That’s a good spell,” Evie said, once she was able to speak again.

A trace of a smile appeared on Ffion’s lips. “Not a spell, just a little trick I learned somewhere. Can you move to the couch?”

Evie tested out her limbs: she was as wobbly as a fawn when she first clambered to her feet, but it only took a few seconds for her to regain her balance. “Yes.”

“Excellent. Now, help an old woman to her feet, get yourself some water, and then we’ll figure out what’s wrong.”

 

The water helped. Evie drank several ladles full of it straight from the well, so crisp and cold that it made her teeth ache. Then she drew some to bring back to the house, sure that tea would help her further -- maybe lavender to calm her, or willow bark to manage the pain that was creeping into the left side of her body. Medicinal teas were one of the first things that she had learned to make on the Isle; they were one of her best standbys, especially in the winter when fresh herbs were scarce.

Soon she was huddled on the couch, an old shawl draped over her shoulders and a warm mug in her hands, sweet-scented steam billowing up into her face. Ffion sat on the other end of the couch, waiting patiently until Evie was ready to speak.

“There was this mist in the woods,” she began, trying to sort out the best words. “But it felt strange – like, I don’t even know. Like it was consuming everything. And there was nothing beyond it, I tried to throw a rabbit in there, but it just ate the rabbit and the string too…” she trailed off, suddenly aware of how insane her words sounded.

Ffion frowned – she had pronounced wrinkles about her brow, her eyes, her lips. She had never tried to hide her emotions, and those wrinkles told her life story, one of deep thought and deep joy and deep sorrow. “I have a theory, but it’s not a very positive one.”

Evie took a long sip of tea, bracing herself.

“I think this world may be collapsing in on itself.”

Evie drained her mug and stood up, moving to make herself another cup. Maybe she should double up on the lavender this time, maybe that would be enough to stop her from spiraling down into another panic.

Ffion continued speaking as Evie hovered by the kettle. “You said that there’s something wrong in Auradon and that the magic is fading. Well, I anchored this spell to trees around the cabin, which would have been absorbing and retaining magic from earth. But if that’s gone, and there’s no way to replenish it…”

“This world would have no way to sustain itself.” Evie finished her sentence. The kettle let out a shriek, as though alarmed by her words, and Evie rushed to remove it from the fire.

“Again, it’s just a theory, but it’s not an illogical one.”

“I was – I hit my head on a tree right before I woke up in this world.” Evie fixed her tea, letting the familiar motions sooth her while her mind ran through the facts. There was something – a splinter of an idea, a sliver of a theory – that was itching at her brain, but she couldn’t quite form it into something cohesive. “There was a lightning strike and then I was here…”

“The fog will probably keep getting closer as the magic runs low,” Ffion said. “Would you be able to set some markers, so we can see how far it travels in a day?”

Evie nodded, too distracted to remember that Ffion couldn’t see her. “Ffion, have you ever tried to contact anyone back in the other world – I should have asked earlier, I’ve been so stupid –”

“No, you haven’t.” Ffion stood up, her voice brisk. She rummaged through the small apothecary in her kitchen, grabbing hold of a silver candlestick. “I didn’t want to raise your hopes and then crush them by mentioning the possibility to you, because I tried several times and failed each one. But it now occurs to me that I may have failed because the people I’ve tried to contact are dead.”

She passed the candlestick to Evie, rummaging around for other components. “You’re going to have to find a suitable surface, if you’re going to try, and you’ll have to set the spell yourself. My eyes just won’t stand any detail work anymore.”

 

Evie leaned over the edge of the well, staring into the perfect still surface of the water. She had fished out any leaves and debris that the wind had swept in; she had arranged the precious metals around the well’s wall, angled to conduct the magical energy in the most efficient way. She had powdered chalk and infused it with a precious pinch of pixie dust; she had drawn the glittering sigils so carefully that it had taken her hours just to check and double-check them.

If the spell didn’t work after all that, then it never would.

Evie drew in a deep breath, picturing Mal and Jay and Carlos, their faces so dear to her that she could place every freckle and scar and smile. “ _Mirror, Mirror, in the ground,”_ she chanted. “ _Show me where my friends are found.”_

And slowly, slowly, the water began to ripple and shimmer.

 

liv.

The days grew hotter and longer, each one so sticky with humidity that drawing even drawing breath took some effort. It was nearly impossible to sleep under the heavy blanket of heat; Mal even abandoned the small mountain of pillows adorning her bed when they became too suffocating.

Everyone’s tempers were short, the air filled with all the tension of an oncoming storm.

On a Sunday, Moira of Clan Dunbroch slipped into a heavy sleep, one from which no one could wake her.

On a Monday, Róng’s bones became so brittle that you couldn’t squeeze her hand without causing a fracture.

On a Tuesday, Elisabeta’s skin was so dry that even opening her mouth to drink made her skin crack and bleed.

And on a Wednesday, Charles stumbled into Queen Belle’s sitting room, mumbling about having to deliver a message to Mal. But before he could speak further, he started coughing blood onto his neat uniform jacket.

Mal slammed her book shut and bolted from the chair; the book hit the ground, its pages bending and creasing under its own weight. She threw an arm around Charles to support him, letting him lean his beanpole frame on her until the coughing-retching-bleeding finally stopped.

After his coughing fit faded, his lips quivered as though he was holding back tears. “Sorry,” he said, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

“Don’t apologize, you’re fine,” Mal said, as gently as she could manage. Then she turned to Belle and said, “I’m taking him to the infirmary. I won’t be back.”

“Of course,” Belle said; she somehow looked calm and gracious even as Charles’s blood dripped onto her rug. Things had been very quiet between them after their discussion of Gaston’s family. Mal spent most of her time reading to Belle, keeping an eye on any developing symptoms, and writing notes for Dr. Moreau to look over. But every now and then, she would glance up and see Belle staring at her with a thoughtful, sorrowful expression. “Do as you must.”

“I plan to,” Mal muttered to herself, navigating Charles towards the door. His legs were wobbly and he nearly overbalanced every few steps, swaying like a spindly tree in a strong breeze. But he leaned on her when he needed to, quiet and far more trusting of her than she had ever expected a stranger to be.

“You’re okay, we’re almost there, it’s not far now,” she kept repeating as they staggered down the halls, trying to imagine to comforting words an Auradon girl might say. On the Isle, help was always offered in silence, so as not to draw attention to weakness. You pretended that you were doing it in exchange for a favor, or as a trade. The children of the Isle had few possessions and unsafe homes and mad parents, so they clung to their remaining dignity with everything they had.

“S-sorry,” Charles muttered, gagging on the blood that clotted in his throat. “The – the dwarf boy asked me to get you. He said that he had a book you wanted.”

“Thank you. You’ve done a good job.”

Charles craned his head, looking back over his shoulder. He was pale, beads of cold sweat dripping down his face. His eyes were wide and fever-bright. “I’ve got – got to get back to my post. I wasn’t supposed to leave, but he said it was important…”

“No. You did your job, now you’re going to rest. If anyone bothers you about it, I’ll deal with them.”

Somehow, that made Charles giggle. The force of his laugh made him start coughing again, but at least he was distracted from the idea of working.

“What’s so funny? I’m terrifying.”

“Noooo,” he said, drawing out the word – Mal was starting to wonder if he’d tried to medicate the pain himself earlier. “You’re too nice.”

“Well, don’t share that with anyone, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”

They rounded the corner to the infirmary and Mal kicked the doors open. She let Charles slump down into the waiting chairs by the door and flagged down a passing nurse. “Cassandra, this one needs a bed,” she said. “You can put him near the coughers, if there’s room.”

The nurse nodded briskly, turning to grab a bundle of clean sheets from the linen cabinet. “Thanks, Mal. Will you fill in the paperwork for him?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mal started to turn away, but the nurse tapped her shoulder, holding a handkerchief out towards her. Mal took the cloth, trying not to appear as confused as she felt.

“He got some blood in your hair – right there, on the right,” The nurse gestured to her own hair, before hefting the linens up in her arms and moving to make up a new bed.

Mal gave her hair a cursory scrub and strode towards Moreau’s office, where copies of the check-in paperwork were stored. The main hall seemed endless, jammed with beds and each of those beds filled with people writhing and moaning in pain – or worse, lying so still and silent that it was difficult to tell if they were alive. She could make out old familiar faces and new ones, lying side by side. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Chad Charming glaring at her, his blond hair gleaming in the sunlight like fool’s gold.

 

Doug blinked hard when he saw Mal; he opened his mouth to say something, seemed to think the better of it, and shut his mouth again.

“What?” Mal snapped, staggering across the courtyard towards him. The ground seemed to be rising and falling beneath her feet, swaying like a ship at sea. She was very, very tired and feeling very, very impatient.

“Nothing – you, uh, you have some blood in your hair, that’s all.”

Mal removed a hair-tie from her wrist and scraped her hair back into a bun, so that it was out of her eyes. She eyed the bag that Doug was clutching in his arms, anxious fingers twisted up in the straps. “It’s fine, I’ll deal with it later. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Wait – don’t you want this?” He held out the bag, but Mal just shook her head – she was already walking away towards the dorm rooms.

“Come on, we’re all having lunch in our dorms,” she said. There wasn’t anyone else out and about, but there had always been listening ears and watching eyes on the Isle, where information and gossip were precious commodities when there was nothing else to trade. “You should join us.”

 

Mal gave a quick knock on her dorm room – a fair warning to the others – and then cracked the door open and slipped through.

Doug wavered on the threshold for a moment, holding onto the bag so hard that his knuckles turned white, his body was large knot of nervous tension. Mal reached back through the doorway, seized him by the shirt collar, and dragged him inside.

Doug stumbled through the doorway; it took him a moment to find his balance, to raise his head and take in the room in front of him. “Wow,” he said, after a long moment of silence – and then quailed under the eyes that turned to look at him.

The room was kept dark, the curtains shut for privacy, but woodcut lanterns sent strangely-shaped shadows flickering across the walls. Their Wall of Madness sprawled out across the entire left wall of the room, every single scrap of information pinned up and organized, connected by brightly colored strands of thread, as though each white prism of paper was spilling out a rainbow. Soft rugs and cushions, collected over the last several months, adorned the floor amid stacks of books. Mechanical bits and pieces were scattered across one table – a half-finished automaton here, boxes of mixed screws and nails there -- remnants that Carlos had found and set aside for later use. Evie’s sewing supplies were exactly where she had left them; none of them had dared to move her things when it felt too much like giving up hope.

It was a lair, a den, a safe place for them to hide and lick their wounds. They were their most private selves here. Mal wasn’t sure if Doug realized this or it was only the sheer messiness of the room that left him speechless.

Jane was holding a chair steady for Jay, who was bolting a pole horizontally over the Wall of Madness, as though they were going to hang curtains from it. She twisted about, looking over her shoulder and nodding to Doug. Her hair was drawn back into a practical bun, held in place by her new wand.

“Jane? What are you doing here?”

“Trying to get this tapestry hung, that way we can stop worrying about strangers wandering in and we can finally open the windows,” Jane replied, ignoring the more rhetorical aspects of his question. Mal nodded her approval; Jane was getting better about evasion and wordplay, tricks that most fey beings learned from their parents or community.

Carlos emerged from the bathroom, holding a glass filled with water. Sweat was rolling down from his forehead; he stumbled a little as he walked, his movements unsteady. “Jane, could I get some water?”

“Of course,” Jane removed her wand, sending her hair tumbling down over her shoulders. She rested the wands edge against the glass, humming under her breath as she concentrated. There was a second of taut silence and then her eyes flew open, pupils blown wide and her irises glowing the radiant blue of a lightning strike. With a sharp crack, all the water in the glass froze.

Jane redid her hair, her hands quick and practiced. “Sorry, I only meant to freeze part of it, my control has been a little…off, lately.”

Carlos just shrugged and pressed the glass against his forehead, sighing at its cool pressure. He sat down and slumped over the table, wilting like a plant in a drought. “You’re fine, this is even better,”

“Jane? You’re doing magic?” Doug’s eyes were wide like a skittish horse; he looked about two seconds from bolting. Mal placed a hand on his back and gently pushed him into a chair across from Carlos.

“What do you think you’re here to do?” Mal asked, reaching for his bag and pulling it from his shoulders. Its weight was far greater than she expected and she staggered for a moment before heaving it onto the table.

Huh. Doug must be far stronger than he looked.

“Uh, I thought I was just giving you these…” Doug trailed off as Mal pulled out a heavy box and threw open the lid, the room suddenly filled with gleam of glass and precious metals. They were all neatly organized into separate compartments; the box was exactingly and lovingly crafted, with Dwarfish runes carved into the dark wood. A gift from his father, or perhaps one of his uncles? “Um, is that not what I’m doing?”

“Yes, Mal, is that not what he’s doing?” Carlos asked, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. There was still a trace of acidity to his voice.

“What _we’re_ doing is that we’re doing this right,” Mal said firmly, pulling bits and pieces from the box, examining them under the light. “And we’re not wasting any time with mistakes because we disregarded someone’s skills, or because we couldn’t work together. This is for Evie, so you’re both going to do the metalwork while the rest of us design the spells.”

Carlos sighed, rolling the water glass between his palms. He glanced at Doug, held his gaze for a moment. For once, Doug didn’t quail under the attention; he just endured Carlos’s gaze with all the steadfast nature of stone. Finally, Carlos nodded. “Alright, let’s get to work.”

 

It takes them three days to finish the mirror. Mal and Jane and Jay kept their heads together over sheets of paper, their hands tangled, drawing and redrawing runic designs until they were sure they’d made the most powerful design – intricate pathways that wound and curved around each other, broken up by smaller symbols, dots and dashes like punctuation marks.

Doug carved the runes into the glass, so focused and precise that he would lose himself in the work for hours, as day faded into twilight and twilight faded into midnight. Carlos and Doug weighed out minerals and metals – copper and graphite, silver and sphalerite, columbite and cassiterite, gold and diamond dust. They melted down the gold, mixed together the minerals, and added a touch of fairy dust to the concoction.

They poured the mixture into the mirror’s groves, watching as it rolled down the pathways, smooth and shining as silk. They waited a day and a night for it to dry, for the magic and chemicals to interact, for them to awaken and amplify each other.

They flipped the mirror over – its surface smooth as still water, their painstaking hidden on the other side – and slid it into the frame that Doug had designed, bordered with silver filigree and sapphires.

And Carlos took up the mirror with shaking hands and said with shaking voice: _“Mirror, mirror, in my hands, where is Evie in these lands?”_

And slowly, slowly, the mirror’s surface began to ripple and shimmer.

 

lv.

The water rippled, gently at first, as though a stone had been dropped into the center of the well. And then the ripples grew stronger, until they turned into waves crashing into the stone walls, drops of water flying up to splash on Evie’s face as she leaned out over the well.

Her hands tightened on the stones, their old cracked surface rough against her palms – but her own skin was rough now. She was strong and she could do this; she focused her will on the water below and she believed, a true soul-deep belief, in the power of her spellwork and the presence of her friends.

And the water calmed. Light glittered from its surface – not cast down from the sun above, but it seemed to come from inside the water itself, sending strange wavering shadows to dance across the well’s cover. As Evie leaned further out, the light began to coalesce, forming first colors – then vague shapes and textures – and then finally resolved into Carlos’s desperate face.

Evie let out a sharp cry; the noise echoed off the sides of the well, resounding into the forest like the chime of a bell. Tears ran down her nose, splashing into the water – and Carlos’s head turned slightly, his eyes focused directly on hers.  

His face was pale as death, his eyes tight with worry. She watched disbelief, and then hope and then joy cross his face, lighting it up like a sunrise. His mouth opened, his head thrown back in a clear victory cry; she could read her name – _Evie, Evie, Eves –_ in the shape of his lips, but no sound came from the water.

“I can’t hear you!” she cried back, her own voice thick with some strange mix of laughter and tears. She wanted to reach down into the water, to touch its velvet-soft surface and pretend it was his face, but she was too afraid of disturbing the spell to try. She settled for waving frantically at his image. “Carlos!”

The perspective in the water blurred, shifting wildly before it settled again – and now she could see Mal and Jay, both of them reaching out towards her, both of them with tear-filled eyes. The image stayed still for half a second and then blurred again; when it righted itself she could see Carlos, standing in their room. He held his hands up, about shoulder height, and carefully spelled out the letters _H-I E-V-I-E._

 

Jane had her hands clapped over her mouth, but Mal could make out the smile hiding behind her fingers, could see the elation in her eyes through her tears. Jay was shaking hard enough that he needed to sit down, sinking to the floor and hiding his head in his hands. Doug was frozen, caught somewhere on the edges of things, sharing a joy he wasn’t sure if he had any right to experience.

Mal reached out and took the mirror from Carlos, savoring the few seconds where she saw Evie’s smiling face. She turned the mirror back to Carlos, so that Evie would be able to see the top half of his body, could watch him spell out the words with sign language.

His hands moved quicker and quicker, fluttering through the air like hummingbird wings; sometimes he would pause, watching for Evie’s answer. Mal closed her eyes and tried to keep the mirror steady, letting Carlos’s words wash over her as he translated Evie’s answers.

“She says that she’s safe and that she found the witch –”

“She’s in another world, one made from a gone-wrong spell –”

“She’s got pet goats, now, I think?”

“She misses us, she loves us, she promises she’s coming home –”

“She wants to know how far the disease has spread.”

 

The image in the water blurred as the mirror was passed from one hand to another; Evie took the moment’s pause to wipe her eyes clear of tears. When she looked down again, she was staring into Mal’s eyes.

Mal raised a hand to wave, looking just as wrung-out as Evie felt. Her hair was hopelessly tangled, her eyes dark with shadows, her skin pale with exhaustion – but there was still a smile on her face, so big that it stretched from cheek to cheek, because Mal could never do anything by halves, not even smiling. She raised her hands to speak; they moved more slowly than Carlos’s, but without any hesitation. “It would be easier to tell you who isn’t sick now,”

“Tell me that then,”

“Me, Jay, Jane, Doug, Audrey, the girls from Arendelle, Ben, Ariel’s daughters – “ Her eyes flickered to the side for a moment, and she hesitated before adding the last name. “And Carlos. I think that’s it.”

And Evie knew without a doubt that she was lying - or at least she suspected something was wrong, and Mal's suspicions were usually correct. Perhaps Carlos wasn’t terribly ill yet, but that something was coming on to him and that soon he would join the others, with their brittle bones and straining lungs.

She needed to get home. She needed to be there right now – she needed a plan, she needed answers, she needed –

She needed a doorway.

 

Mal dropped to her knees on the floor, leaning against Jay’s shoulder so that they could both peer into the mirror. Evie’s eyes were closed; her lips were moving as she thought out loud to herself, although they could not hear what she was saying. But Mal knew that look – this was Evie with an idea, with her thoughts sparking off each other like steel sharpening steel, honing their edges until her plan was perfect and strong.

Mal could hardly remember the last time she had seen Evie so animated – her hands drew pictures in the air as she illustrated something to herself; she frowned and furrowed her brows and bit her lips and pushed her wild hair away from her shining eyes. It was like the difference between a single thornless rose and a field of wildflowers; both were beautiful, but one had strong roots and bloomed as it pleased.   

 

Evie was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the storm clouds until it was too late. The rain pattered slowly at first, but then it came faster and faster, splashing down on her carefully drawn runes and washing away the last of the pixie dust that powered the spell.

The image in the well began to flicker and fade; Evie let out a wordless cry and reached down towards the water, but there was nothing she could do. Her friends vanished and the water went still and dark, leaving Evie with nothing but the sound of the rain and the scent of wet stone.

There was a flash of lightning from the sky, a low roar of thunder in the distance, and the last piece of Evie’s plan slid into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternative title for this chapter: The Gang Invents Conference Calls.
> 
> The song that Mal references is 'The Last Midnight' from Into The Woods; the fairy tale with a fairy tale references were too much for me to resist.
> 
> Thanks so much for sticking with me through this long break between updates, I really appreciate everyone's patience as my lift gets more hectic. Thank you so much for all the comments and kudos; they truly mean the world to me and I'm so glad that this story means something to all of you. If you have any questions about the story or the world, please feel free to ask!


	6. Chapter Six

lvi.

The mist rolled in, steady as the tide and as inevitable as death. It had moved by inches the first few days, then by feet and then by yards, an exponential acceleration powered by the life that it swallowed. The vegetables in garden began to wilt, the bees ceased their buzzing. The goats were restless, bleating and knocking their heads together as they charged around their pen; their fur stood on end, bristling with static electricity.

And Evie sat before Ffion and explained her plan.

“I was thinking about how we needed a way home, and I was thinking of all these complicated spells that I’d heard tales of – teleportation and transmutation and all the others. But then I realized that the simplest way to do it was just to build a door.”

Ffion closed her eyes in consideration, pushing her food idly around her plate. “ _Build_ one?”

Evie fidgeted in her chair, barely able to contain her energy, all the thoughts racing through her head. She chewed her own food quickly, swallowing as fast as she could so that she could keep talking. “Yes! You anchored your spell into those trees years ago, and they’ve been strong enough to sustain it for twenty years – or sixty, however you want to call it. The spell’s already there, basically, it’s what brought me through when the tree got struck by lightning. The magic's lived and grown right into the wood. We just need to cut down the tree and build it into a door!”

Ffion said nothing. Her eyes remained closed, but Evie could see her eyes flickering about beneath her eyelids, as though she was doing mental arithmetic, calculating the odds and carrying over their chances of survival.

Evie’s confidence faltered for a moment. “Do you – do you think it would work?”

There was a long moment of quiet, broken only by the low moaning of the wind, as though it also felt the pain of being absorbed by the mist. Ffion sighed and then nodded to herself, her expression growing resolved. “Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. “Yes, I think it will work perfectly.”

 

Her plan, however, was easier to declare than it was to execute.

Evie stood before one of the great apple trees, its boughs heavy with hanging fruit, bearing its sweet blossoms so far out of season. They would only be able to lose one tree out of the two that carried the weight of the spell, and it was likely that losing the tree would cause the mist to move even faster. She only had one shot to make this work.

Evie rested her hand against the tree’s rough bark; the other hand gripped the axe. “Thank you,” she said softly. She refused to feel silly for talking to a tree, not when it needed to be said. This was where her journey had started and this was where it would end. “This might hurt and I’m sorry for it, but everything has to change sometime, doesn’t it? You’ll still be you, deep down, you’ll just be a little different.”

The branches swayed in the wind, showering her with pink petals. They tangled in her hair, surrounding her with the scent of apple blossoms. It seemed like the best response she could hope for.

“Alright,” Evie sighed out. She took a step back and set her stance, taking up the axe in both hands. “Alright, here we go.”

 

The air hung heavy and humid about her; Evie’s clothes were soon soaked through with sweat and her damp hair clung to her skin. The tree’s trunk was thick, built from years of growth, but the axe was sharp and her strikes were steady.

The earth shuddered as the tree was felled, its branches snapping against the ground like broken bones. Crushed apples and fallen blossoms filled the air like a heady perfume.

Evie’s arms ached and pain seared its way through her back. Ffion insisted that she stop for lunch and to soak her muscles in a bath, but once the heat of the day had passed Evie marched back into the yard. There was work to be done and so little time to do it.

She chopped off the branches and piled them neatly to the side, stacked like a funeral pyre next to the trunk. She peeled the back from the tree until only the heartwood remained. She measured it and sawed it into planks; she sanded those planks smooth and even, a handkerchief tied over her face to keep out the sawdust.

And as she worked, her thoughts wandered, returning to that old familiar trail in her mind: what had caused the disease? Who wasn’t sick – _Mal, Jane, Jay, Doug, the Atlantian girls, the princesses of Arendelle, Audrey, Ben, Mal, Jane, Jay, Doug, the Atlantian girls, the princesses of Arendelle, Audrey, Ben._ She turned the names over in her mind, watching them fall into order like beads on a necklace.

The sandpaper burned under her hands, the scent of fresh-cut wood all around her. The sawdust gathered like snow flurries at her feet.

_What did all those people have in common, though? What marked them as safe when the disease struck all the others as it pleased?_

The mist moved ever closer in the night, swallowing the forest, silencing the birds and animals, the insects, the creaking and rustling of the trees. And Evie lay awake at night, her ears straining for the un-sound of its approach, the hush that signaled the end of everything.

_It couldn’t have been their upbringing – the children of the Isle had survived many diseases in their youth, but if they had acquired an immunity to this one than Carlos wouldn’t have fallen sick with the others. Jane and Audrey and Ben had all the food and medicine and loving care that they had needed as children, but so had all the other princes and princesses that now lay moaning in bed. It had to be some other factor than where they had been raised._

Evie gathered the fallen branches and chose the longest, sturdiest ones; she trimmed them free of leaves and stripped them free of back and sanded them clean. She found a level spot in the valley; she cleared away the tall wild grass; she planted the branches into the ground and packed the dirt tight around them. She prayed that it would be enough to hold her doorframe stable.

_Jane and Mal were less of a surprise than the others – their fae blood defended them from mortal ailments but left them vulnerable to others things, like the touch of cold iron. And Jay was the son of a djinn, however briefly that state had lasted. So perhaps magic offered some protection from the disease. But what of everyone else?_

In the evening, she and Ffion gathered by the bookcases, deciding which ones were the most important. Evie insisted that all of them were valuable and should be taken with them; Ffion argued that they would need to move as quickly and surely as possible, that the doorway may not stay open long enough for them to haul parcels and luggage between universes. Evie told her which books she was fond of, which ones still sparked her curiosity and that she wanted to examine more closely. The words came easily to her now, tumbling from her lips like fresh water from a spring; Ffion listened to her, a half-smile on her lips. Evie even dared to imagine that there was pride in her clouded eyes.

_Hadn’t Jafar spoken of that topic during his wild-eyed rants? They had been forced to listen to him sometimes, pressed against the wall and not daring to move in case they attracted his attention, watching his hands claw at the air as though he could still tear through the universe at his will_.

The tree had been wide enough that she could make the door from a single plank. She spent the evenings carving panels into it, adding designs around the edges, staining the wood dark with dye, doing all she could to make what she believed to be a proper door – half of magic was belief, after all.

_Hadn’t she seen something on the inheritance of magic in Jafar’s notes, when Jay had gotten too curious about his own history to resist looking through them? They were only the ravings of a madman, of course, but madness occasionally had a spark of truth…_

Evie removed the hinges and doorknob from Ffion’s front door; they could feel the cold wind swirling through the cabin at night. They could see the mist creeping to the edge of the valley, hovering among the trees, waiting and seething and gathering the strength for its final charge.

 

lvii.

They were nearing the height of summer now, where the sun beat down harsh and blinding, where pressure filled their air like a fire about to spark. Mal could sense that they were reaching a tipping point – midsummer was supposed to mark renewal and the promise of fresh life, bright futures and good harvests. Now the world was hung poised between life and death, between disease and healing; she had no way of knowing which way the world would fall.

There was a terrible silence that hung over the medical wing now; few people had the energy to scream or moan or thrash against the pain. The doctors and nurses were fatigued, many of them struggling against the first signs of illness. It was an honest miracle that it had spared them for so long, but it seemed that their luck had finally faltered and the contagion had spread.

Mal sat by Carlos’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall with the steady tide of sleep, as if she could keep guard against the specter of death. She took his pulse, a laughably transparent excuse to hold his hand. She could feel the too-fast flutter of his pulse beneath his skin, like a bird beating its wings against a cage.

She herself was limp with exhaustion – soon she would have to gather herself, to stand up and kick and scream and fight against the world until it finally gave in to her will. But they had heard nothing else from Evie, no matter how many times they had asked the mirror to show her. Now Carlos was lying pale in bed, his body ravaged by fever. Now their hope seemed to be slipping away by the hour, like a moon waning in the night sky.

Right now she needed a moment – just one single moment – to collapse.

She could feel the others watching her, the ones still able to open their eyes. They were staring at the final, horrible proof that none of the villain children could have caused the disease – not when it could have resulted in Carlos getting sick. Not when it ended with Mal hunched over by his side, already half in mourning; not when Jay spent every night by Carlos’s side, his shadowed eyes daring them to send him away.

Her head nodded for a moment, her eyes slipping shut – she could have been asleep for a second or an hour, time no longer held any meaning for her. It was only the soft shuffle of footsteps that had woken her, letting her lift her head in time to see Dr. Moreau coming towards her. He looked years older than he had at the start of the summer – she remembered the proud, strong man who had met her every challenge with one of his own. Now he walked slowly, each movement careful for fear of losing balance and shattering his bones against the stone floor. He held a cup of tea; she watched drops of liquid splash over the side with every staggered step.

He held the tea out to her without a word; she accepted it in silence. They had done their best, each in their own way, to fight off this illness. He could recognize that now and so could she. There was nothing more to be said.

Mal sipped the tea, the taste of ginger sharp on her tongue, and watched bruise-black storm clouds roll across the sky. There was no point in despairing, she knew. Once you sank into despair, you drowned in it and it was nearly impossible to swim back to the surface. But surely, surely, with all she had gone through in her life, she had earned a moment of despair.

And then the door was thrown open with a crash like thunder and Jane burst into the room, her wide eyes gleaming with magic. “Mal, we need to go, now!”

 

Evie screwed the last bolt into place, anchoring the hinges to the door and the door to the doorframe. She had oiled them the night before, so that they swung open smoothly and soundlessly. She tested the doorknob and it turned easily under her touch, even though she didn’t dare open the door yet. She was practically bouncing on her toes, alight with energy even as the mist lapped at the edges of Ffion’s land.

_She was going home!_

Evie whirled about, her skirt flaring out around her knees. She spun on her toes several times for the sheer delight of it, before rushing over to Ffion and taking her arm. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she said, leading Ffion from the old cottage to the new door. “I can’t wait to introduce you to everyone – you’ll love Mal, she’s got your kind of humor –”

“I’m sure she’s a fine girl,” Ffion said, drawing her spine straighter as she approached the door. The years seemed to fall away from her as she readied herself, as easily as shrugging a cloak from one’s shoulders. “Take the books, would you?”

Evie took the small parcel of books from her they had finally narrowed it down to a stack of six, bound together with leather straps so that none of them could be lost. Compulsively, she checked for the Dryad’s dictionary, a nervous habit that had grown on her over the last few days. She was sure she could remember it well enough, if she needed to, but no memory could ever be as authentic first account.

When she had assured herself that the dictionary was there, she looked up to see Ffion tracing the designs she had carved into the doorposts – twisted runes for protection and safe travel, as neat as her unskilled hands could make them. Jay would have done a far better job, of course, but she would be seeing him soon and perhaps she could ask him to teach her, now that she no longer feared cutting and scarring her skin.

“You’ve done so well,” Ffion said, something wistful in her voice. “There’s just one more thing we need…”

Before Evie could ask what she was talking about, Ffion lifted a hand towards the sky, the other wrapped firmly around the doorposts. The clouds above them began to darken, as though someone had spilled ink all across them. Evie felt the wind stir, rain-scented and cold against her skin. The clouds pressed together – between the unworldly white mist and the mounting thunderheads, the world seemed to be dissolving. Evie clutched the books tightly to her chest, almost afraid that the ground would turn to vapor under her feet.

Ffion’s white hair whipped about her face; for once she had worn it down instead of a tight bun or braid. The clouds began to swirl, spinning faster and faster over their heads. The mist seeped forward, drawing closer to them like the tightening of a noose. And Ffion stood in the center of the chaos, perfectly calm. When she opened her eyes, her irises were glowing faintly behind the film that covered them, like lighthouses in a storm.

She tilted her head back, letting the first fresh drops of rain fall on her face. There was a smile on her face, one that was young and wild. “What we need,” she said, “Is a spark.”

Ffion snapped her fingers. The world exploded.

Evie flung herself back, turning to cover the books and to protect her eyes from the sudden burst of light. There was a clap of thunder, so loud and so close that it rang in her ears. Ozone and electricity filled the air. When Evie dared to turn around and open her eyes, she saw a trail of white-hot lightning arcing down from the sky, sizzling and crackling and spitting out sparks, to land in Ffion’s hand.

The lightning hung there, suspended and straining against Ffion’s firm grip; the power seemed to course through Ffion’s body and then into the wooden door frame. Slowly, although no hand had touched it, the doorknob began to turn and the door swung open.

Evie squinted against the brilliant light; through the doorway she could see a forest in full summer bloom and feel a wave of heat sweep across the threshold, chasing away the chill in her bones. It was Auradon.

She stepped forward as though in a dream, clutching the books so tightly that her hands ached. She paused before the door, staring into the other world. She was so close…

But Evie had always been a smart girl.

Instead of stepping through the doorway, she turned her back to it, facing Ffion one final time. “You’re not coming with me, are you?” She phrased it as a question, but she already knew the answer. She was a smart girl, even though she sometimes wished that she wasn’t.

Ffion shook her head. She was still smiling, but it had shrunk to something smaller, something sadder. The lightning haloed her in white light, cut out against the darkness of the sky. “No, I’m not. I’m an old woman, Evie, and I’m not sure if my body will take to crossing between worlds and times. It’s taking everything I have just to hold this door open. And even if I did make it through, it would be to a world where I would hunted and caged by those who fear magic.”

“But I – I need you!” Evie’s voice broke in the middle of her sentence. Tears were building in her eyes, but even as her world took on a blurred edge, she could see the mist advancing steadily through the clearing. She was running out of time.

Ffion shook her head gently. “We both know that’s not true, my dear. You’re a brave woman, and a smart one, and far stronger than you give yourself credit for. Anyone would be lucky to have you for a daughter. I would be proud to count you as my own, if you would allow it.”

Evie gave a wordless cry and flung herself forward. She crashed into Ffion like a wild thing, her body straining with sobs, tears of joy and pain flowing down her cheeks. She hugged the woman with everything she had, even though Ffion could not return her touch, with the lightning strike in one hand and the doorframe in the other.

Evie finally forced herself to draw back, wiping the tears from her eyes so that she could take one last look at Ffion: glorious and centered in a storm of her own making. The lightning was so hot that the rain sizzled and evaporated when it got too close, filling the air with steam that reflected and magnified the light – and Ffion seemed to take that brightness into herself, standing unbent and proud through it all.

Ffion leaned forward slightly, pressing her forehead against Evie’s – the only gesture of affection she could afford to make. “Go. Live your life and live it well.” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, even though they were the only two in the world. “Besides, I want to see if there’s anything on the other side of this mist – if there is, I could be the first one to travel there!”

Evie nodded. Over Ffion’s shoulder, she could see that the mist had already swallowed up the cabin. Her time was almost up, but it was so hard to tear herself away from the only adult she had ever trusted. “Thank you,” she said, her voice trembling so hard that she could barely get the words out. “Fare well, Ffion. I hope we meet again somehow.”

There was nothing else to say, nothing else she could do - and Evie had grown up doing the practical thing, no matter how painful it was. She took a step back, keeping her eyes on Ffion as she did so – for a moment she hovered on the threshold between worlds, neither here nor there, weightless and formless –

And then, simple as anything, she was in Auradon.

Through the open doorway, she saw Ffion release her hold on the doorframe. The door swung shut of its own accord – one last mercy from Ffion, so Evie did not have to see her walking into death’s open arms, or perhaps so none of the mist could possibly make it into Auradon. The door itself began to fade out of existence, slowly but inexorably, the same way that dew will evaporate under the light of the sun.

And then Evie was left to stare at the ramshackle remainder of the cabin, where she and the boys had once spent the night after traveling through the woods, a pale ghost of the place that had gradually become her home. She was back.

And then someone crashed into her, sending her sprawling to the ground.

 

lviii.

Mal let Jane grab her hand, dragging her through the empty, echoing halls. She barely had enough energy to move, let alone ask questions – but fortunately, Jane had enough strength for the both of them.

“It’s Evie! I know what Carlos needs when he’s most in despair and he’s been needing Evie for ages and ages and my magic hasn’t been letting me get to her but now I feel like I can!” The words tumbled out of her mouth so quickly that Mal could barely process them, but the only word that she had needed to hear was _Evie_.

She could feel Jane quivering, her hand shaking faster than a hummingbird’s wings as her magic began to overpower her control. Mal squeezed her hand tighter, wrapping her other hand around Jane’s forearm, determined not to be left behind.

There was a buzzing in the air, a pitch that started low and scaled higher and higher, until it was beyond the reach of human ears. It rang in Mal’s ears; she could feel their pointed tips vibrating along the same frequency. She turned her head: there was a clock mounted to the wall, but the hands seemed to hesitate before ticking off the seconds. Time wasn’t moving slower though, she realized. They were moving faster.

Then Jane’s eyes flared blue and they vanished with a loud _pop_.

 

The first thing that Mal noticed was the freshness of the air, the scent of summer growth and wildflowers stirred by a breeze that wound its way through the forest. She hadn’t left the school’s campus in ages; it was only when she felt her shoulders slump in relief did she realize how confined she’d felt.

The second thing she noticed was a run-down cabin in the center of the valley, its crooked skeleton covered with mildew and moss, its metal fixtures rusted and disused. It had been someone’s home once, but not for a very long time.

The third thing she noticed was Evie, who stood facing the cabin, her back to Mal.

Mal released her hold on Jane and took off, sprinting sure-footed down the valley’s sloping sides, leaping across the small river that cut its way by the cabin, and crashing into Evie so hard that both girls went tumbling to the ground.

Mal twisted so that she would take the fall for both of them, pulling Evie to land on top of her. The landing jarred her bones and she narrowly missed hitting her head on a rock, but nothing mattered by Evie’s solid weight pinning her down – the feeling of her best friend, her _sister,_ warm and alive against her. Mal hung on with all her strength, her world narrowed down to the beat of Evie’s heart, the rise and fall of her chest as she drew in deep, ragged breaths.

Mal felt tears roll down her cheeks, tasted salt against her lips, unsure if they belonged to her or to Evie. She forced herself to relax her grip and Evie pulled back just enough that they both could sit up. One of her hands was tangled into the front of Mal’s shirt, the other one clutching a stack of books, tied together with a strip of worn leather.

Evie’s hair was longer, reaching nearly to her waist; she wore it free instead of the complicated braids that usually adorned her head. Her skin was darkened by the sun, bringing a healthy glow to her cheeks. Mal could feel the strength in her arms, a strength that hardly been there when she’d gone away. But she was still Evie, through and through.

“You’re home,” was all she could say, before Evie buried her face into Mal’s shoulder and began to cry in earnest. Mal wasn’t sure how long they sat there; she only knew that at some point they untangled themselves enough to include Jane in their embrace. She only knew that Evie was here with her, even if her heart was burdened by some grief that Mal couldn’t yet understand.

Finally, Evie sat back, wiping the last few tears from her eyes. “Jane,” she said. Her voice hoarse from crying, but it was still steady. “Jane, do you have enough energy to take us somewhere else? Somewhere by the water, somewhere the disease hasn’t spread yet?”

Jane got to her feet, reaching out a hand to pull the other girls up with her. “I think so, why?”

“Because I think I know how to cure this illness.”

 

There was not quite an uproar when Evie strode into the infirmary, carrying a tray of mugs with her. There was not enough energy left for people to shout and cause a fuss at her, but there was a tide of gasps and whispers that swelled in her wake. It was easy for her to ignore, though. The only thing she cared about was reaching Carlos, who was sitting up in bed, whiter than the sheets he was lying on. Well, ‘lying’ was a relative term – he was struggling to get to his feet and reach her, calling out her name, while Jay did his level best to keep him on the bed.

When she got closer, she could hear Jay speaking gently to him: “Carlos, stop, it’s just the fever making you see things –“

Carlos made a noise the broke Evie’s heart. He slumped back against the pillows, his chest heaving from just that simple action. Carlos must have hallucinated her presence many times before, for Jay to sound so tired. He haven't even looked around to investigate her arrival.

Moving carefully, so as not to spill her tea, she sat down in one of the chairs surrounding Carlos’s bed. She settled the tray on her lap, steam from the mugs rising up to fill the air. “Really, boys, what have I told you about getting in trouble without me?”

Jay’s head twisted so fast that she feared his neck would snap; his eyes went wide, as though she would disappear the second he took his eyes off of her. Carlos just gave her a hazy smile, reaching out towards her with one unsteady hand. “Hey Eves,” he said, his voice little more than a rasp. “Missed you.”

“I missed you too, I missed you both so much,” she said, her eyes darting back and forth between him and Jay. Jay had been shocked into stillness, a marked difference from his usual frantic energy. He looked at her as though she was a ghost. There would be time for more exuberant greetings later, when everyone was feeling better – but first she had work to do.

She guided a mug into Carlos’s hands, holding it steady for him while he wrapped clumsy fingers around the handle. “Drink this, it will help you feel better,”

Carlos tipped his head back, draining the mug in two long swallows. He handed it back to her and watched her with trusting eyes, waiting for her next instructions. She passed him another mug, repeating the process until her tray was empty.

Evie set the tray on the floor and leaned over to feel his forehead, the fever’s unnatural heat radiating against her skin. “There, how’s that?”

“Less thirsty,” Carlos said. Was it her imagination, or had some of the haze cleared from his eyes? “Water was never enough, I was always thirsty. It’s better now.” His eyes shut for a brief second and then he jerked himself awake, turning towards her with panic on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but Evie beat him to it.

“Go to sleep now, I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise.” She held tight to his hand to give him some assurance, relief filling her when he allowed his eyes to slip shut.

Jay was by her side instantly, his hands hovering in the air before her – she could read his urge to touch, to reassure himself that she was real. She caught his wrist with her free hand, guiding his palm to her cheek, leaning towards him so that he could cradle her face in his hands.

She was exhausted and tear-stained, her clothes worn and her hair a tangled mess. Her hands were no longer soft, her skin was no longer white as snow. She could feel the eyes of all the others on her, but she didn’t care. Their opinions weren’t important.

“Willow bark tea,” Jay said softly, holding her like she was some precious treasure. “Was that really all it took?”

Evie shook her head, but she could hear scuffling behind her before she could speak. She twisted her head, seeing Jane and Mal leading Dr. Moreau towards her. The first time she had seen him, he had dismissed her, shooing her away as though she was a child, inexperienced and untested by life. She would not let that happen again.

She extricated herself from Jay’s hold, rising to her feet to greet the good doctor. It looked as though there were new wrinkles on his dark skin, stress-lines that creased his forehead and lent him a permanently worried look. There was a bit more grey in his hair too, as though years had gone by instead of only a few months. This disease had taken much from them; they would have to fight to win back what they could.

Evie gathered her skirts and dipped into a small curtsy. “My apologies for invading your sickroom, Dr. Moreau. I was afraid that time was of the essence and thought it would be better to beg forgiveness than permission. I believe that I’ve found a cure for this illness, or at least a temporary measure that will prevent it from spreading further.”

“I may require more information than that, Miss Evelyn, before I authorize any further use.” But for all his cautious words, there was a flicker of hope in the doctor’s eyes. He was leaning on Mal, she noted. Perhaps desperation had cured him of his aversion to magic – she could only hope it was so.

“While I have not had time to study this disease up close,” Evie spoke slowly, trying not to let her voice shake or her confidence falter. She had learned to speak her mind freely with Ffion, but doing so with strangers was quite different. “I have formulated several hypotheses from the information I’ve been given and observations I have made.”

Dr. Moreau did not respond, but neither did he dismiss her as a fool. He only stood and listened.

“My first hypothesis: the disease is not, in fact, contagious. The quarantines have not stopped the spread of the disease and we have no evidence that it is spread through contact. Mal has not gotten sick from her time attending to these patients, nor has Prince Ben gotten sick despite his devotion to his mother. So even if contact is a factor, it can’t be the only one.” She took a deep breath, refusing to rush or stumble through her explanations.

“Which leads to my second hypothesis: magic prevents the spread of illness. The only people who haven’t gotten sick are those with magic in their lineage – the nieces of Queen Elsa, the daughters of Queen Ariel and the other merpeople, the children of dwarves – or the children whose parents were placed under a very strong curse. I have less evidence for this claim, but I do believe that the effects of powerful magic might alter a person even after the curse is removed, and that those alterations might be passed onto their children.” Her eyes flickered to Jay, remembering how shaken he had been by his father’s research – the neat papers that held the ravings of a madman, the thorough accounting of Jafar’s twisted experiments, the repeated references to _dna_ , whatever that might have been. “Such as the curses cast on High King Adam or Queen Aurora.”

She saw Dr. Moreau nod slightly, his eyes flickering back and forth, as though he was charting out the path her words might take. “What else?”

Evie lifted her chin, staring him in the eye. She might lack the data she preferred to back up her claims, but she had been turning these problems over and over in her mind, deducing and experimenting and crossing out theories until she was sure her thoughts were viable. She trusted her own mind now. She knew that she was right.

“My third hypothesis: that we have been eating and drinking and breathing magical energy ever since we arrived in Auradon – perhaps in other worlds as well – and our bodies have grown dependent on it for health and protection from disease. If that magic were to fade - if this system of protection would fail - we would be left vulnerable to any number of illnesses or natural weaknesses from within our bodies.”

“And the tea?”

She took one of the mugs from Carlos’s bedside, holding it out to him so that he could examine it for himself. “Willow bark tea, taken from trees where magic still lives. It acts on two levels: to relieve pain and to provide a source of magic for the body to heal itself.”

Dr. Moreau took the mug from her, peering into the dregs as though they would reveal more secrets. “And how do you know this will work?”

Evie took a step back, brushing her hand against Carlos’s forehead. It was soaked with sweat, but his skin was mercifully cool. She felt a smile curl across her face. “Because, doctor, it already has.”

 

lix.

Like Carlos’s fever, the summer heat also broke. The air grew cool and the wind grew strong, sweeping in dark clouds and a thunderous downpour that left the gardens half-flooded. The beat of rain drumming against the windows was a constant, a soothing sound despite the ferocity of the weather.

_It was_ , Evie reflected, _absolutely perfect weather for tea._

She had ensconced herself in the library, taking advantage of the peace while it lasted. Her cure had worked, even though it was taking some time to restore strength to the far-gone students. Soon the halls would be full again, echoing with laughter and chattering voices – and she had spent so long in isolation that even the thought of crowds was enough to make her wary.

But, a small voice insisted, she would be able to handle it when she needed to. Her fear of disapproval had weakened under Ffion’s guidance; the voices in her head, always insisting on perfection, had finally fallen quiet enough for her to ignore. She had herself for company – she even _enjoyed_ her own company, she was coming to realize. She had spent so long shedding identities, contorting herself to meet everyone’s expectations, that she had hardly been able to recognize herself.

Now she wanted to see who she really was – she wanted to stay in her own skin, to embrace herself. She wanted to see who she might grow and become, now that she wasn’t mangling herself for the sake of others’ comfort.

There was a light _knock, knock_ of knuckles on wood; it barely carried over the sound of the storm, but it was enough to shake Evie from her thoughts.

She looked up from her book to see Doug, standing by one of the shelves. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said quietly. “Would it be alright if we talked?”

She looked him up and down, tilting her head in consideration. He looked nervous, his good hand worrying at the hem of his cloak as it dripped rainwater onto the floor – but he bore her inspection without interrupting. Eventually, she nodded her head.

“Thank you,” he said. He shed his cloak and sat down in a chair across from her, his posture stiff and formal. There was a long pause where they both watched each other, waiting for the other one to start –

“Is your –” Evie started to say, but Doug spoke at the same time.

“I really must –”

Their voices overlapped, their words tangling together. They both broke off their sentences, lapsing back into confused silence. Doug looked very much like he wanted to crawl under the table and disappear, his expression so panicked over such a mild thing that Evie had to giggle. After a moment, Doug laughed too. He leaned back into his chair, looking a bit more relaxed than he had at the start of the conversation. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, once their laughter died off. “You go first.”  

“I just wanted to ask how your hand was doing. Mal told me about how you injured it.”

“Ah, yes,” He glanced down at his hands; he was worrying at the wooden splint with his good hand, smoothing his thumb across the grains and knots marking its surface. “It’s much better, actually. I can probably get it off soon, I just didn’t want to bother the nurses while they’re so busy with everyone else.”

Evie set her book aside, leaning forward in her chair. “Do you want me to take a look at it? I’ve got some experience with broken bones.”

“Maybe later – I mean, if it wouldn’t be any trouble for you,” He had begun to look flustered again; the restless motion of his hands moved faster. But he lifted his head to look her right in the eye, not flinching away from her gaze. “What I really came here for was to apologize to you. Your friends brought it to my attention that I have been treating you…unfairly, I suppose is the best word for it. I was too forward, and I didn’t pay attention to what made you uncomfortable, and I was only thinking of myself and I’m so sorry,”

His voice cracked a little on the last word; it took him a moment to clear his throat and continue. “If there is any way I can make it up to you, I’ll do it. And if you would like me to leave you alone, than tell me that’s what you want and this time I’ll listen.”

Evie rested her chin on her hands, giving herself a moment to think. Before, she would have fallen over herself to reassure him, to promise that he hadn’t done anything wrong, but now…Now she needed to think of herself first.

Finally, she stretched her open hand across the table, wiggling her fingers until Doug placed his splinted hand in hers. “Thank you for apologizing,” she said. She pressed gently at the joints of his thumb, watching his expression for any signs of pain. “I think I have to offer my own apology as well – a friend recently pointed out to me that no one can read my mind and that if I want something, I need to inform others of it. Yes, there are things you could have done better, but there are things I could have done better too.”

She began undoing the small leather belts that held the splint in place. “That being said, I have had a lot of time to myself lately to think things over, and there are some things that I’ve come to realize. One of those is that I do not desire men the way one is expected to, in terms of relationships and marriage.”

She had tried to phrase it in the most delicate way that she could, but Doug’s ears still flushed pink. “Oh! You mean – er, that is, women?”

Evie couldn’t help the laughter that burst out of her – it was a question that she had often asked herself, after all. “No, not women either. I don’t desire a relationship with anyone, although friends and companions are appreciated. I would like to be friends with you, if you would also be willing – but I need you to understand that this isn’t something that will change with time, and I won’t suddenly wake up some morning and be madly in love with you.”

It was Doug’s turn to be silent. He watched Evie manipulate his fingers, making sure that the bones had healed straight and true. She was glad, in a very quiet way, that he wasn’t rushing into any responses. These kind of things deserved their due consideration.

“Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I would like to be friends and I think I do understand what you’re saying. But I’ve also spent a very long time thinking of you, um, in a romantic sense, and it may take me a while to break that habit. Will you let me know if I do anything wrong, or if I make you uncomfortable?”

“I’ll do my best,” Evie replied, easing the splint off of his hand. “There, good as new!”

“Thank you,” he said. His eyes were wide and his cheeks were still pink, as though he hadn’t expected the conversation to go as well as it had. “I’ll – I’ll let you get back to your reading. I’ll see you later?”

“Yes,” Evie said. There was a part deep within her, still shaking and scared, that thought she was being too demanding – that she had done something wrong by setting boundaries around herself. But that part was fading, withering away like a plant without sun, overshadowed by the memory of Ffion’s pride and approval. “Yes, you will.”

 

lx.

Mal pushed open the windows of the Queen’s room, breathing in deep as the fresh air began to circulate through the room. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the air cool and breezy, the perfect accompaniment to the mild heat. As she peered down into the courtyard, she could see students – only dots of color from this height – mingling together in the sunshine, recovering from the long illness that had stolen much of their summer.

There was the rattle of fine china from behind her, as Belle finished her third cup of tea and set the cup back in its saucer. While Evie’s cure had worked, it had to be taken consistently in order to prevent the disease from returning. It was a temporary solution, one that was only sustainable while the land still contained magic. Eventually, they would need to find a better answer.

But the Queen’s strength had returned, and that was all that seemed to matter to the King. Belle was sitting on the floor instead of the bed, organizing her stacks of books so that they could be transported back to the palace ahead of her. Although, every so often, Mal would glance down and find her lost in a book, starting a story or rereading a favorite passage, before pulling herself away and continuing to sort the books. There were roses in her cheeks again, and a brightness in her eyes. Mal could no longer feel the emotions of others - Evie theorized that her magic had focused on defending her from the invading illness, leaving less energy for managing her hyper-empathy - but she could see the happiness radiating from the Queen.

Mal turned away from the windows, glancing about the room. The room was clean, Belle’s clothes were packed away, she had served the Queen her tea – there was nothing left her to do.

Well, there was no point in hovering about awkwardly; she had more important things to do with her time. She crossed the room, picking up the tea set on its delicate silver tray. “Is there anything else you need from me, your majesty?”

Belle glanced up from her current book, which lay undecided between two piles. “Oh, actually, yes. Here, give me just one second.”

She got to her feet without assistance, moving towards the closest. Mal heard the clatter of suitcases being opened and fabric being ruffled; Belle reappeared a moment later, holding a slim wooden box in her hands.

“I usually like to give more practical gifts,” she said, making her way to the bed. She patted the cover beside her, waiting for Mal to join her before continuing. “But people here have some strange respect for the more impractical things.”

She passed the box to Mal; she ran her hands over the smooth wood, at the floral designs that had been carved into the box. Carefully, she undid the catch and opened the lid – only to be blinded by the sudden dazzle of metalwork and jewels. Nestled on velvet padding was a slim silver circlet, made from entwined ivy vines; irises, made from amethysts and sapphires, sparkled against the polished metal.

“Do you like it?” Belle asked – it took Mal a moment to register her voice and another moment more to realize that she sounded _shy_. As though she really cared about what Mal thought. “As I said, I usually try to give books –“

“Why?” Mal blurted out, staring down into the box. She hardly dared to touch the crown; the metalwork was so delicately wrought that she feared it would snap beneath her fingers. “Why are you giving this to me?”

“It’s to thank you, for all the hard work and care you’ve shown for those who were ill. You never wavered or turned your back on any of them, no matter how scornful they could be. It’s an apology, too, I suppose – you’re a fine young woman, Mal, and I’m afraid that we have been remiss in recognizing that. You’ve been a good partner for my son, although we were apprehensive when we first heard of your relationship.” Belle let out a soft sigh, her gaze drifting across the room towards her own everyday crown, glittering on the sun-drenched desk. “Besides, a crown gives your voice a little more weight around here, no matter how silly it seems.”

Mal stood up and moved to the mirror, carefully lifting the crown onto her head. The metal was cool and smooth against her skin, the silver a striking contrast to her bright hair. It sat lightly on her brow, fitting flawlessly. She had never owned anything so expensive – her first thought was how much she could trade it for, how much food and supplies that she could barter with it, how she could pry loose the precious stones and use them in spells.

But there was also a part of her – a very small part – that wanted to indulge. One part that wanted to be silly and impractical. One part that wanted Ben’s family to like her, even if they had spent decades keeping her locked up on the Isle, punished for crimes that she hadn’t committed. One part of her that wanted to drop her guard.

She turned back to Belle and was somewhat startled to realize that _she_ was feeling shy as well. “Does it look alright?”

Belle’s smile was as radiant as the sun. “It looks perfect.”

 

Evie returned to her room with an armful of books and opened the door to find Mal sitting on the bed, turning a crown over and over in her hands.

Mal looked up at Evie, a wry smile crossing her face. “It looks like we’ve switched destinies, somehow.”

“What, me a witch?” Evie sat down beside Mal, taking the crown from her hands to examine it more closely. It was light and delicate; not at all like the weighty affairs that some students wore. The gems complimented the vivid color of her hair. It looked like it had been made just for Mal. “And you the Queen of a kingdom?”

“Our mothers,” Mal said, collapsing back against the mattress. “Would be so furious.”

“That’s generally a sign that we’re doing things right, isn’t it?” Evie lay back beside her, pressing the crown back into Mal’s hands. They had spent many afternoons like this, curled up in the bed like foxes in a den, telling tales of what had happened to them – the struggles and joys that they had endured. She would never grow tired of this, of being able to turn her head and find Mal at her side.

“Still, I can’t help but feel like I’ve stolen something from you.”

Evie tucked her head against Mal’s shoulder. She knew the night that Mal was remembering – how their original plan had been for Evie to administer the love potion, to trick Ben into a relationship. It had made sense at the time: It would please Evie’s mother and save Evie from her wrath, and Evie had a gentler way with people than Mal did. _It’s much more believable,_ Mal had said, _for someone to fall in love with you instead of me._

She remembered how she had come to Mal the night they made the love potion, tears in her eyes and panic in her heart. _I can’t do this_ , she had cried, _I’m sorry, I can’t do this_. Because she had been taught that relationships meant pain and fear and doing things that you didn’t want, simply because it was expected of you.

She remembered how Mal had taken her hand, calm and in control. It had been so easy to trust her, to let her take the burden when she said, _don’t worry, I’ll take care of it._

“Trust me, you haven’t. I never would have been happy in that role – but I think there’s a chance that you could be.”

Mal held the crown against her chest, running her fingers over the rim as though she was trying to memorize every curve and groove. “Maybe. Have you had any more luck with the translations?”

Evie pushed herself up from the bed and sank down to the floor, groping about underneath the bed until she found the loose floorboard. They had hollowed a little space beneath the floor, for their most important secrets, one of them being the Dryad dictionary. “A little bit. I’m trying to cover all the variations, just so we have them ready if I mis-translate something and the spell doesn’t break first try.”

“Here, can you show me what you’ve done so far?” Mal joined her own the floor, spreading out scraps of paper across the polished hardwood. And so they worked, leaning on each other, and the future held a bit more hope than it had before.

 

Evie wiggled her bare toes against the lush grass; the ground was soft and cool in the sun’s fading light. They had swept through the valley earlier in the day, removing the sharpest stones and the prickliest branches from the clearing. Mal was hunched over the bonfire pit, striking two flints together until the sparks flared up and caught the wood, sending sweet wood-smoke through the air.

Students had watched them come and go through the woods all day, most not even bothering to conceal their curiosity. She and Mal had chopped wood and stacked stones for the fire pit; they had collected fresh fruit from the grounds and made their own bread in the kitchens; they had donned crowns of their own making – Evie’s made with flowers, Mal’s decorated with the antlers that deer had shed in the spring. They discarded their shoes and wore their simplest clothes, with no heavy fabric to weigh them down.

It was Midsummer. It was time to celebrate, to wish for good things in the coming seasons. It was a time to return some magic to the earth.

Evie flung herself back onto the grass and stretched her arms over her head, luxuriating in the last golden rays on sunshine. For the first time, she had helped Mal with the preparations – not fearing splinters from the wood, or tearing her clothes, or ruining her hands – and there was a pleasant tiredness in her body. The crickets were chirping in the long grass, accompanied by a distant choir of frogs calling out to each other by the pond, and the sharp crackling of the bonfire as Mal fed it kindling. There was a picnic blanket spread out across one corner of the clearing, covered with a feast of fruit and bread and cheese.

“Why do we have to wear the blindfolds?” Doug asked, struggling to tune his fiddle without sight. He, Jay and Carlos had joined Evie on the grass, each of them holding instruments, each of them wearing a blindfold.

“It’s for your own protection,” Mal said, leaning back from the fire as it roared higher. “If you see us tonight, we’re traditionally obligated to tear you limb from limb.”

Jay twisted away from Carlos to look at Doug, an incredulous expression on his half-hidden face. “Are you seriously telling me that you let Mal slap a blindfold on you, walk you into a forest, and you didn’t ask any questions?”

“Well, I figured if she was going to kill me, she would just do it without any fanfare.”

Jay sighed, dropping his head into his hands. Carlos patted his back sympathetically. “Why do none of you have any survival instincts? Are you trying to kill me?”

“You all wouldn’t even be here if we had more women with us,” Evie replied. “But we need someone to play the music.”

For a moment she longed for the Isle again – for the one night when the women had walked without fear, when the men had locked their windows and barred their doors after the first few deaths. She missed the way Harriet Hook’s tartan skirts would flare out when she danced, the way Uma moved with the power and grace of an ocean wave; Ginny Gothal daring to leave her tower for just one night; Freddie Facilier and the shadow that would mirror her movements, the perfect dance partner. She missed the younger girls, who would revel in the freedom and whatever food they had collected, whirling around a bonfire until the break of day.

But they were keeping with the tradition here in Auradon, that’s what was important. And across the ocean, her friends and allies would be sharing in the same ceremony, linking them all together through magic and sisterhood.

There was a rustling from the clearing’s entrance and Jane entered the valley. Her hair floated loose over her shoulders; there was a basket of pastries hung over one arm. “Sorry, I hope I’m not late – I got held up a little bit.”

“You’re fine, is everything –” Evie started to ask, but then she turned her head to see a gaggle of other girls hovering at the edge of the clearing, hanging back and holding each other’s hands as they took in the scene. She caught sight of Queen Elsa’s white-haired nieces, one of Queen Tiana’s daughters, the colorful saris of the girls from Agrabah. Audrey was not among them, she noted.

Jane was kneeling by the picnic blanket, arranging her goodies onto plates. She looked towards the other girls, as Mal snuck up behind her and dropped a flower crown onto her head. “Well, what are you waiting for? They don’t bite.”

“Much,” Carlos and Doug muttered at the same time, both of them giving a startled glance in the other boy’s general direction.

“What exactly are you doing here?” asked one of Ariel’s daughters, taking a hesitant step towards the fire.

“We’re here to thank the earth, and give it back some of its strength.” Mal tapped a bare foot against grass, spreading her arms wide, as though she wanted to embrace everyone. “Dancing, singing, feasting, all away from the eyes of men – it’s traditional in a lot of magical cultures.”

“What kind of dances?” Lonnie asked. She stepped forward more confidently than others, reveling in her returned strength. “We don’t know any steps.”

Mal tossed her head back and laughed, spinning around and twining her hands through the air. “You make them up!”

Evie got to her feet, plucking a tambourine from the grass beside her. She stretched out a hand towards the other girls, tugging them into the circle. “It’s Midsummer – it’s time to share our power!”

Evie counted off a beat with her tambourine and heard the boys pick up a wild melody behind her; Mal whooped and threw her hands into the air, twisting and twirling, her hair shining in the firelight. Evie fell into step with her, grabbing Mal’s hand and spinning her around. One by one, the other girls joined in with them, laughing as they went, kicking off their shoes and shaking their hair free from elaborate up-dos.

Evie tilted her head back, watching the first stars appear in the sky. Their troubles weren’t over and there were dark days ahead, but for this one evening – well, just for this one evening, there was magic in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we've reached the end of Evie's arc! Thank you all so much for sticking with this story, and for all the support and kindness you've shown this silly writer. Your kudos and comments mean the world to me and I truly appreciate the time you take to write them.
> 
> The Midsummer celebration is based mainly off Salvic tradition - I found most of my information in The Dancing Goddesses by Elizabeth Wayland Barber, which is a really interesting read if you're interested in the origins of folklore. 
> 
> Sorry if I've mangled any biology/medical facts in this chapter - I've only got a basic level of understanding about the immune system, so hopefully my descriptions of a magical immune system make sense!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you've all enjoyed this story! Jay's arc is up next and I'm really excited to write this one - I've had some of the scenes in my head for a very long time. Thank you all again for your support - you're all delightful, each and every one of you!

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! I hope everyone has an excellent holiday filled with tricks and treats. Just as a warning, updates might be a little slower in coming, as I have (somewhat ill-advisedly) decided to try NaNoWriMo this year. I'll be working on some original work alongside my fanfiction, but don't worry, this story won't be falling by the wayside.
> 
> The 'Mockingbird Gum' is a reference to The Adventure Zone, which came into my house and ripped out my heart in the best way possible.
> 
> Title comes from Faun's Schrei es in die Winde -- the song can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJzXFT__GYs) and translated lyrics can be found [here](https://lyricstranslate.com/en/schrei-es-die-winde-shout-it-winds.html-0).
> 
> I've changed (or invented) some of the names given to minor characters, because let's face it, Disney did not try very hard when it came to naming these kids. I'll probably add a note explaining the name meanings, if anyone is curious, but I'm posting this quite late and I don't really have time to do it at the moment.
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are much appreciated! I always love to hear what you all think of the stories, and I'm always happy to answer questions!


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